Still Waters
by Infernalitae
Summary: In the beginning Whitney Miller had been just one more screaming, frightened human doomed to die. Had it not been for her resemblance to a dead woman, she, too, would have joined the faceless masses in a forest of bones. She was not his mother, yet still he stayed his hand until all resemblance faded and luck became something else entirely. *Eventual romance/mature content.
1. In the Woods Somewhere

**NOTES:**

Greetings, reader! I very recently was introduced to the Friday the 13th movies and became an instant fangirl for reasons that I'm sure you understand if you're reading this. This fic is based primarily on the 2009 remake for a number of reasons, the foremost is the utter wasted potential of the kidnapping part of the plotline. Whether you feel it in character for Jason to have done it or not, I think you'll probably agree it was a waste. I have been STRONGLY compelled by my crazy brain to fix it, and fix it I shall.

Now, I hate basically every person in this goddamn movie aside from Jason, who is a sweet precious cinnamon roll (fight me), including Whitney. I don't care how big a chickenshit (aka rational human) you are, after six weeks of being fed and taken care of and not hurt this girl should not still be freaking out the way she does. She's like every bad horror scream queen stereotype and I just can't. So. My version of Whitney is basically an OC in that she's going to be very different...in as much as I can make her different when all we really see is how she freaks out and runs away. As you'll see in this first chapter.

I have a pretty defined plan for this story, so while there might be an update delay here or there depending on time, this is not going to be one of those four-or-so-chapters-and-forever-incomplete monsters. I'm not positive on the exact number of chapters, or how exactly the POV is going to fall - but I know it will alternate between Whitney and Jason, and it will be finished.

Oh. And yes, there will be smut, eventually.

Enjoy, fellow fangirls!

* * *

 **CHAPTER 1**  
In the Woods Somewhere

~/13/~

 **Day 2**

Whitney paused to flex her hand, trying to coax the pins and needles to ease where they stung all the way down to her fingertips. She allowed herself a few seconds of this, rotating her hand back and forth. The movement caused the chains to clank in a muted reminder of the precarious nature of her situation – as if she needed one. As if she wasn't staring at the metal cuffs locked in place about her wrists.

Bending her hand down at the wrist she set the edge of the manacle to the wall behind her and set to work again.

 _Scritchscritchscritch._

The angle was awkward, and her hand was already complaining again. It was slow going – whatever rock formed the wall at the back of her corner was tough enough that even the sharp metal edge of the manacle required repeated and significant force to penetrate the surface. But she didn't stop until she was done and there was a small line scratched into the rock. One down. One more to go. One for each day she had been trapped down here.

The phrase _hell hole_ crossed her mind in a flash of humor as dark as her mood. It wasn't inaccurate, either. She was in a literal hole under the ground where the air was stale and smelled of earth and metal and gasoline, chained to a wall, at the mercy of a killer. If that couldn't be described as hellish, she didn't know what could.

As far as she could tell she had been deposited within a cavernous space that might have started out as a shallow basement. It was certainly far too deep and expansive for any crawlspace. This didn't explain the odd twists and niches, the passageways leading off in other directions, nor the panel of metal mesh that served as the second wall to her corner. It was far more like a rabbit warren than any basement she had ever seen, and the metal grating, tools, and bits of machinery she could see scattered about the rest of the seemingly random piles of stuff were enough to think it was something else entirely. She'd heard there was an old abandoned coal mine out here, long abandoned in the mountains and the woods. Perhaps this was it, connected via digging to the space beneath the house.

The house.

Knowing what she did now, she would never have let Mike drag her inside. She had known before she even set foot inside the crumbling, ramshackle building that they were trespassing onto something they should not – that the ghosts that lined the cluttered rooms like dust would not take kindly to being disturbed. It had felt wrong, disrespectful in the highest sense. Like encroaching on a grave, the site of some horrific, unnamed tragedy. Still she had let Mike lead her inside to investigate.

Why? Why had she gone with him? Had it been because she simply didn't want to be left outside alone? Or had it been to appease yet another subtle dig at her nonexistent _sense of adventure?_ She wished she had refused, threatened to leave without him, or else just done it. Done something – _anything_ – else. She wished she had never come on this trip, never laid eyes on that creepy, sleeping horror of a house. The house where Mike might still be somewhere, broken, pulled apart, blood pooled around him in a still mirror of the life that had left his eyes.

Oh god, this was actually happening. It wasn't some awful vivid dream from which she could wake. This was reality. She wasn't even supposed to be here. She should be at home taking care of mom and studying for her exams…but she wasn't.

Forcing in a measured breath, Whitney set her cuff back to the wall to begin on another tally. From what she could calculate down here with only faint rays of light to go on she had been down here for at least two days including that night.

 _No._

No, she didn't want to think of that night. Focus on the metal scraping rock, the ache at her wrists or in her belly. Anything else. Keeping track of time would keep her busy, keep her from going insane. Or so she told herself.

The scrape and creak of old wood caught her ear, followed by an unmistakable thump of weight upon earth, and every strand of muscle in her body went tense.

Hurriedly she scrambled away from her tally wall, pressing her back into the corner until she could feel the pattern of the mesh pressing through her shirt. Her hands curled into her chest, as if to form a barrier to the organs that lay beneath, the heart that beat so hard into her ribs that they hurt. Or perhaps just to minimize the tremor beginning anew in her limbs, radiating outward from the cold clench of terror in her belly. Because death was coming.

 _He_ was coming.

She remembered the unease she had felt at Wade's retelling of the events of the Crystal Lake camp, the chill that had swept through her, raising gooseflesh across her skin. The fine, tiny hairs at the back of her neck had stood on end as though a chip of ice had been dropped down the back of her shirt. Ghost stories had never been up her alley. Between the covers of a book when tucked inside on a rainy day, maybe, but not in the middle of the woods not half a mile from the abandoned campground not long ago touched by tragedy.

When Mike had teased her about being spooked she had laughed it off, but deep down she had known it wasn't just the guilt and discomfort of being away from her mom that had her itching to leave. She hadn't been able to articulate what it was that was making her feel so jittery and off and so hadn't tried. It had been the sole reason she'd let him talk her down enough to stay. Because grief and stress did things to the mind, and she had had no solid reasons to back up the ominous feeling that had been lingering over her since the sun had set. And she'd actually managed to trick herself into believing it for a little while. Until they had come across the dirt road, the weather-worn wooden sign, and the feeling had risen up again like bile: a deep, black dread that from that moment on she had not been able to shake. The feeling of eyes in the dark, watching. Waiting.

She wasn't sure what changed: the weight of the air, the heavy lay of the shadows in the cavernous space, just that something did. Not half a second before the man – her _captor_ – appeared.

For a moment she didn't see him. Not in the now. She saw then: the blade stabbing up through the creaking floorboards, slicing through Mike's foot, his leg, as he gave startled, garbled yells. She saw the arm bursting through the old wood as though it were rotten in earnest, not simply aged and un-cared for. The head wrapped in stained, filthy cloth like something out of a nightmare lifting from the dark. A massive hand seizing him, dragging him down into hell as he bid her to run in a gurgling shriek as he was pulled apart.

Whitney had still been in shock by the time she'd made it back to camp, half convinced that perhaps it had been some kind of joke. A cruel joke - and one in response to which she would have left immediately - but a joke. That was, until she had seen the reddened, blistered form of Amanda. The other girl had been lying half in and half out of the fire pit having fallen from where she appeared to have been strung up in a sleeping bag to cook like a foil packet, her skin melting, clothing charred to her flesh. The sight of it had been a slow, surreal horror, but the smell…she would remember that smell for the rest of her likely very short life. Burned hair and meat and chemicals all bound together by the dry, overpowering aura of woodsmoke. She would have vomited for certain had she been given any more time to process what she was looking at. But she hadn't, for Richie had been alive and screaming at her, leg clamped in the teeth of a fucking _bear trap._ Cut down to the bone.

When she thought about it, she could still feel the metal beneath her hands; slick and slippery with blood, the fine shards of bone that flaked away as she did her best to pry apart the jaws of the trap to free him. She could remember the look on his face, the meaty crack like a melon being cracked in two, when she had looked up to see the blade of the machete buried so deep in his skull that it had split between the eyes and nearly to the bridge of the nose.

That had been the exact moment she knew she was neither dreaming nor being outlandishly and cruelly pranked. That moment as she had scrambled backward on all fours and scraped her palms open on the rocks, screaming and sobbing as the hulking beast of a man planted a booted foot against Richie's face and shoved to free his blade. And in that moment all she had been able to think of was the story told by firelight, half for fun, half to scare.

 _"He came back,"_ Wade had said, and she had seen the dirty, faded sign hanging over the broken down fence and knew. Saw the cluttered, dust-laden bedroom of a long-dead child, the name lovingly carved into the headboard, and knew.

The feeling of dread, the sensation of eyes following them through the trees – they had not been nothing.

She remembered marveling at the sheer size of him – taller than any man she had ever set eyes on and far, far broader. A veritable giant from her position scrambling backward in the dirt. Horror and awe bubbled at the back of her throat, mixing with her terror. Then he had come at her, bearing down on her like some great titan of blood and vengeance. His arm arced up and back, blade gleaming black in the firelight – wet with Richie's blood – and she had known without doubt that she was alone and that she was staring into the face of her own death. She had seen the glint of light on metal, felt the soft brush of air against her face as the blade sliced through the air...and then nothing.

She had blinked through the tears veiling her vision she found the edge of the blade a hair's breadth away from slicing into her cheek.

He had frozen, his entire towering frame gone still as stone. Her surprised had been muted by the terror but she remembered peering up at him, breathless, taking in the heavy, tattered coat, the broad hand gripping the handle of the blade. A piece of sackcloth or sheeting had been wrapped about his head like a shroud, concealing his face entirely but for the hole through which a single eye glittered – and though it was wreathed in shadow she swore she had seen the rage. The empty, soulless fury burning like black coals as he stared down at her. Yet as she stared back, her heart vibrating in her chest like a trapped bird, she would have sworn the fury ebbed, fading into something like...shock?

She didn't know how long they had stayed there, locked in the impasse, as she processed the fact that all along there had been a psychopath stalking them in the woods. But the next thing she knew he was swinging the blade away from her face, slipping it into the holster strapped to one powerful leg. He had bent, seizing her around the middle and lifting her straight from the ground as she screeched and struck out with a sudden burst of all new terror. Ignoring her cries of _"no!"_ he hauled her over his shoulder like a sack of flour and started off, back toward the direction from which she had fled.

While she would have liked to think she hadn't made it easy for him, she knew better. She had thrashed and kicked and clawed like a wet cat, screaming all the while – even though she knew there was no one to help her. He had carried her as though she were made of pillow fluff, not bone and flesh, one arm wrapped firmly about her legs as she dangled there struggling uselessly. _Carried_ her all the way from the makeshift campground and across the old bridge and through the trees without any sign of strain or exhaustion, or even a heavy breath, and without seeming to give a single damn about her efforts to fight her way free.

" _No, please,_ " she had begged as he towed her back to the decrepit house. " _Please, let me go!_ "

There was no response. He merely pulled her down through an opening in the floor, as she screamed and sobbed, as she clawed at the wooden frame, as she clung there before he removed her hands and pushed her resolutely on into the tunnel underneath.

There he had chained her, and there she had been.

He came around the corner from the passageway which led to the trapdoor: a great, hulking shadow emerging from the blackness beyond until he stepped through one of the watery ribbons of light struggling in through the holes in the floor above them. Fear flickered through her, a crackle of ice darting down to her toes as he approached, moving with a silence that seemed ill-suited to a man so large. And _god,_ but he was large. Tall and broad and thick with muscle.

She had felt the slope of his shoulder lodged beneath her belly, the flex of an arm like a python about her thighs as she had kicked at him. The shirt he wore – once white, perhaps, or gray – draped a deep, solid chest. The work pants were lose and nearly colorless, but they, and the straps that held the machete in place at his thigh, did enough to prove that his legs were no less powerful. She could see just the base of his neck in the gap between shirt collar and the sack mask, and while the skin looked a bit odd the lines of muscle and tendon there were prominent. His hands alone were nearly twice the size of her own, the palms wide and fingers long.

In one of these she noticed he held a bowl, and she realized he must be bringing her food as he had done earlier. And the day before. Something cold and lumpy in another deep ceramic bowl with a metal spoon sticking out. She hadn't touched any of it – not because she thought he would go through the effort of bringing her all the way here just to feed her rat poison, but because to eat what he brought her felt like an acceptance of how things were when she very much did _not_ accept it.

She watched him narrowly as he sank into a crouch beside her little makeshift bed nest. He was angling his head to look at the bowl he had left for her earlier: still untouched as the one before it had been, and his shoulders seemed to lower just the tiniest bit, as if in disappointment.

That confused her.

Why disappointment? Why not anger? Why didn't he force the stuff down her throat if he wanted her alive as he seemed to, since he kept bringing more food for her to spurn. Yet he had only come down the three times since bringing her. He brought food, checked her water (which she had refused to drink, again, out of principle) and left her to the dark and to the nightmares burned into her mind. Which brought her to the much more important question she had been asking herself since he'd locked the manacles about her wrists: what did he want her for?

He hadn't hurt her, had barely even touched her since situating her in her little corner. In fact, she was fairly certain he hadn't planned to take a captive. When she had first blinked through the darkness of the cavern room there had been no signs he'd meant to bring someone back with him. He had chained her first, forcing her wrists into the old fashioned pair of handcuffs and padlocking her to the rock wall before proceeding to bustle up and down from the trapdoor into the house and back with various objects. The little mattress, the bedding, the crate turned upside down to create a table, the gallon bottles of drinking water, unopened and still sealed – arranging the little space as she watched, paralyzed with her fear. The fact that she had been intended to die with everyone else was no comfort to her. Something had changed his mind, and the sheer range of possible reasons for this was staggering, each worse than the last. A brutal death might have been far better than what awaited her here.

"What do you want with me?" she found herself whispering, almost under her breath. But he'd heard her. She saw his visible eye flick to her face before lowering back to the table to exchange the untouched food for the fresh bowl.

It wasn't the first time she'd asked. She had all but screamed herself hoarse as she'd demanded an answer, over and over from between choking sobs throughout that first day. The response was the same. He didn't speak. Hadn't spoken a single word, uttered a single sound since dragging her here. Merely remained a silent behemoth of intent she couldn't guess.

Her lips parted again, readying a simple _please_ , and immediately bit her tongue. There was no point in pleading for her life. He either meant to hurt her or he didn't and there was nothing any amount of crying, begging, or screaming was going to do to change it.

Without so much as acknowledging she had spoken he rose, becoming once more a tower of menace made flesh, and turned to go.

She didn't know what made her do it. The exhaustion of two days spent in a constant state of fear, the culmination of hunger and weariness and stress, the frustration of being simply kept there without knowing why – or perhaps all of it. Her body simply moved of its own accord, seizing the new bowl of cold sludge in both manacled hands and hurling it across the room where it smashed, an explosion of broken crockery against the rock. And regretted it instantly.

He stilled, head swiveling to regard her over one shoulder with that single eye. Setting the other bowl down on the work table piled high with half-rusted tools he started back toward her as panic rushed in to wash away the burst of rebellion.

"I'm sorry," she blurted, holding her hands up, palms out in a gesture of defensive surrender. " _I'm sorry,_ I didn't mean—"

He crossed the floor in three long strides as she shrank, folding in on herself to create a smaller target. Yet for all the violent retribution she expected in payment for her moment of fight, she received none. He simply seized her by the forearms and pressed her hands down into her lap.

There was no real force in it. It was more as if he were correcting her as one might have a stubborn puppy, and the look he shot her with that single dark eye read quite clearly: _Don't do it again_. He held her there for what felt like a small eternity, then released her. Tapping the side of the nearest water jug twice with two fingers as if telling her to drink it, he rose a second time and left her, taking the bowl from that morning with him.

She sat there for a moment, stunned, her heart in her throat. Ten shallow breaths later, or perhaps twenty, she picked up the jug, clumsily twisted off the cap, and lifted it to her mouth.

Her empty belly pinched at the sudden introduction of liquid, and she regretted throwing away the food. It had been a stupid thing to do – testing the limits of a murderous psycho who had clearly heard the story surrounding these parts and decided to spend his time stalking campers in the woods like the drowned boy turned ghost of the legends. So incredibly stupid. About as stupid as refusing to eat when keeping up her strength was all she had.

No one was looking for her. They had left no specific destination, and had hiked in. There was no car within ten miles to trace, to even hint where they had gone. She was the only one who could save herself, and she couldn't do that if she was weak and dehydrated.

The next time he came with food – and she dearly hoped he would, that the ill-advised moment of rebellion hadn't discouraged him – she would sit there meekly and eat it like a good prisoner. And then she was going to get the hell out of there.


	2. Bury

**CHAPTER 2**  
 **Bury**

~/13/~

 **Day 3**

Jason dreamed of his death.

He dreamed the dark water rose up around him, enveloped him in its cold, crushing embrace. He dreamed he fought it, struggling against the current which seized him with a python's grip, pinning down his limbs – his chest. Water filled his mouth, dark and cold and flooding, tasting algae and fish skin and mud as it dragged him down like a belly full of stones. He dreamed the jeering, pointing fingers, the screams and laughter muffled by the deafening rush of the water in his ears, his skull, his brain. He dreamed, and then he woke in daze of old and sour fear, sweat pooling in the crevices of joints and the hollow of his throat.

He didn't often dream anymore. The years seemed to have eaten away at that part of his mind, eroding it like so much soil upon a riverbank. But then, he didn't sleep much anymore either.

He had relived the day of his death so many times that it no longer felt like memory. Memories were supposed to fade over time. They were supposed to curl and brown at the edges, take on a yellowish patina of age and gloss over. The details were supposed to fog over, blur, no longer easy to discern. Memories did not haunt in clarity.

He had no idea how or why he had lived. He remembered the water, the sensation of it filling every space in his body – veins and organs and cells, soaking into the marrow of his bones. He remembered the blackness. He remembered that no one had saved him. He remembered waking, whole and breathing…and utterly confused.

Was he a ghost? He wasn't really sure. He supposed ghosts didn't eat or sleep or do much thinking outside of whatever ghostly things they did. Yet it would not have surprised him if he was.

He sat up, straightening limbs from where they had curled to fit atop the bed now far too small for his frame, and set aside the bear. It was a ragged thing, the bear; its once velvety-soft fur clumped with dirt and dust. One button eye was missing, and a seam at its side had split, and every once in a while he had to push the stuffing back inside to keep it from spilling out. Tucking it carefully back into place upon the lumpy pillow, he rose with a creak of old wood.

Slipping the machete into its holster he made his way through the grimy halls to the kitchen, selecting an empty bowl and a spoon from the open drawers and brushing off the dust. It was the last clean bowl, at least until he had a chance to take it the other one to the camp and wash it. The third lay in a shattered mess down below.

The trapdoor opened on silent hinges with a faint tug, and Jason stepped down into the dark.

He had found the tunnels by accident, nearly falling in through a collapsing roof. They had been left over by the mining company long before there had ever been a camp in the area. But it had been he who had deepened the crawlspace beneath his mother's house, dug through the collapsed sections to create new passageways and connected them with the preexisting tunnels. They served his needs not only for secrecy, but for storage and stealth, and as a means of quick travel through his land. They were home. The only home he had left.

Closing the trapdoor behind him, he turned down a passageway immediately to his right into the wide niche which served as a storage space. There was little order to the contents there: metal sheeting lay stacked to one side next to crates of sprouting potatoes, several gas and electric lanterns, folded tarps, coils of rope, bags of grain and of sawdust, and other such things lay in random heaps and piles. Shelves packed with what must have been several years' worth of canned goods lined one rough wall, and it was to these he went. Selecting a can at random he studied it for a moment, his one eye narrowing as he considered, then turned back to the main tunnel.

The close space smelled of earth and old wood, the tang of metal, the faint sharpness of kerosene. Safe smells, familiar smells. Yet now there was a new scent amidst the others; warm, faintly floral in the way of summer grass, beneath which was something salty-sweet and musky. Sweat and skin. _Her_ skin.

He followed the slow descent of the passage, letting his steps fall heavy as he approached the shallow set of stairs at the top of the cavern. He didn't want to startle her. If he did, she might scream some more, and he would much rather that she didn't.

Her eyes were already fixed on the steps when he entered, wide in her pale face, and he felt the pang at the sight of her – the sharp throb of confusion and yearning in his chest.

He knew what was whispered about him, around stoves and campfires, throughout the nearest town. He knew what they called him, what they thought he was. Slow, stupid, insane. The deformed undead monster. The same snide insults they had used when he was a boy. But he was not stupid, he was not delusional. So when he had seen his mother's face staring up at him from the ground, crouched behind the single slim hand lifted in a wordless plea for mercy, he had felt a chill ripple down his spine. It couldn't be her. She was dead, gone. _Buried._ Wasn't she? That was what he'd believed…

He heard the slithering rattle of the chain across the hard-packed dirt floor as the girl shifted, drawing her knees in, folding her arms close to her chest. Making herself small.

So many humans had lost the instincts to survive. They no longer listened for danger when the trees grew still, when the wind quieted and stole the voices of frogs or birds. They no longer searched the dark for the eyes that stalked them from beyond their fires. They assumed they were untouchable, the pinnacle of natural order.

 _She_ had not. He remembered that very clearly.

The group had split, and as he had circled them, taking stock of how many there were he recalled hearing her voice as she and the boy she'd been walking with had approached the old camp entrance. She had taken one look at the half-rotten sign, the trampled fencing, and declared that she didn't want to enter. Smart girl. The boy should have listened to her. She should have left him to his fate and ran. Not that it would have mattered. They were already trespassers, and they could not be allowed to live.

" _They must be punished, Jason. For what they did to you. For what they did to me."_

It had been raining that night; a mild summer storm, wet and wild. The wind turned the rain to a thousand tiny knives to slice the skin, thunder and lightning splitting open the sky as if the old pain and rekindled rage had summoned it – paid for by tithe of blood and death. That night when he had opened his eyes and lungs and breathed again. It had been a riot of noise and light, his ears ringing and his heart hammering so fast that he'd thought it would burst right out of his chest. He had struggled upright, blinking the water and bright spots from his eyes, and saw. The clash by the docks, the swing of the blade, the body falling – head rolling. The lifeless face streaked with mud, cradled in his hands. Dead, gone.

 _Mother._

A year later, when the fury and loss had strengthened him, he'd tracked down the girl that had killed her. He'd tracked her to her home, cut off her head in vengeance, and vowed that anyone who set foot on the land his mother had died to preserve would pay the tithe. In blood, and death.

 _"Kill for Mother, Jason."_

And he had.

He was his mother's son: the guardian of her memory, guardian of this land. Executioner to any and all who dared to encroach upon their home, defile her memory, and desecrate the earth – everything he had and everything he was. He had spent his life mastering his environment. He knew this land like the back of his own hand, understood his purpose as it had become. He was utterly in control. Until very suddenly he had not been. Until he had raised his blade to wreak his vengeance on this, the last of them, and found himself powerless to strike.

Pausing, he set bowl, spoon, and can upon the cluttered table. He heard her sharp intake of breath as he unsheathed the machete, and he wished he had a way to calm her. He didn't know how to tell her he meant her no harm – at least for the time being – that he simply meant her to watch him open the can.

Her repeated refusal to eat had left him wondering whether she thought the food inedible. Perhaps if he were to open it in front of her she would see it was fine and eat. With a quick, deft motion he sliced the top from the cylinder, careful to angle his body so she could see. Then, very deliberately, he set the weapon down on the table and left it there as he brought the dishes and her meal – something red and chunky with bits of white that smelled vaguely familiar, like an old, half-misplaced memory. She shuffled backward as he approached, pressing herself back against the wall, and he kept his distance as he crouched down on the other side of the overturned crate to set down the bowl.

Her eyes were rapt, flicking from him to the empty dish, a faint crease between her brows. Again he felt the pang of familiarity and longing. Swiftly followed by a discomforting uncertainty. Shoving it back, he emptied the contents of the can into the bowl, pushing it slightly toward her. Then, sitting back on his heels, he waited, hoping.

She swallowed. He could see her throat work, a quick bob of motion: she was hungry. Of course she was – she had been down here for two days and a night without sustenance. She had, he noticed, drunk some of the water he'd left her, at least a third of one jug. That was good, at least. For a few measured seconds she simply stared at the bowl. After a measured breath, however, very slowly, she uncurled her hands from where they had been pressed against her chest to reach for the food.

She was clumsy with her bound hands, balancing the bowl between one and the edge of the crate while using the other to work the spoon. He frowned, wishing he hadn't had to restrain her. Given a choice, he would not have. He knew what it was like to be bound up in the dark, afraid and unable to move, certain no one was going to help. It had only been the once, but he remembered all too clearly. If only he could trust her not to run...but he couldn't. Still, she managed one bite, then another, by lowering her head to the spoon. Her face twisted as she chewed, her swallows labored. Evidently whatever he'd brought her was less than appetizing. But she ate at least half the contents before setting the bowl back down and folding her arms back into place like a shield before her. She looked very young, and very, _very_ like his mother.

The resemblance was not exact: he could see that. He had no idea how many hours he had spent studying the picture in the locket mother had carried. The image in it had depicted her as a young woman, long before Jason had ever known her, yet he'd stared so long at it that the details had come to linger in his mind as though etched there. The nose was wrong, as was the set of the eyes. But the dark hair, the high forehead and fine brows, the graceful bone structure…something there had called to something deep inside him, and stayed his hand.

The image had been so vivid, and in spite of the occasional burst of recognition the certainty of before evaded him when he looked at her. He wondered if he wasn't simply hoping for that clarity, that vivid image, just once more.

"Um…"

He blinked, vision clearing in time to see the girl flinch as if at the sound of her own voice. He regarded her, waiting, and noticed the way she was sitting, with an odd stiffness that hadn't been there before.

"I—" she began again, wetting her lips briefly, "I need to…"

She made a vague gesture toward her abdomen, and he understood. Of course. Someone who ate and drank more often that he did would subsequently need to relieve themselves more frequently.

Leaning forward, he ignored her cringe away as he reached to the padlock attaching her chain to the iron ring set into the rock, extracting the key from an inner coat pocket. With a muted click it released and he pulled the chain free. He stood, gesturing for her to follow. Needing no further urging she scrambled unsteadily to her feet as he headed back toward the tunnel mouth and the trapdoor beyond.

He exited first, pushing the wooden door open with a flutter of leaves and dirt. Wrapping the end of the chain twice about one hand he lifted himself out before pivoting to reach down for her. She shuffled backward half a step, uncertain, and he could almost see the needs of her bladder warring with her desire for him not to touch her. He simply waited until she relented, moving back within range. His hands tucked beneath her arms, slim and soft, and hoisted her up onto the floor with a rattle of metal links.

She had automatically braced her bound hands against his shoulder as if afraid of being dropped. The instant her feet met peeling wood she stepped away, clasping her hands tight to her chest as he led her out through the dilapidated hall and outside.

It was nearly noon, the summer sun high in the sky and beating down upon the earth. The air pressed against the nose and mouth, suffocating even as the lungs dragged in oxygen. The girl made a small sound behind him, a kind of wordless choke he assumed must be in regards to the heat. He didn't feel it as she surely did, but he was grateful that at least it was cool underground with the house and tree cover to serve as a buffer. He would be sure not to keep her out for too long. Maybe once the sun went down and the breeze carried across the lake he would bring her up again just to be outside, to walk around a bit when the air was cooler.

He led her down the overgrown path toward the campground, doing his best to pick a route mostly free of larger obstacles such as felled branches, protruding roots, and the like, and careful to keep his stride shorter so as not to end up dragging her in his wake. The effort proved necessary, as she seemed determined to keep as much space between them as possible. He took her along the route that passed through the campground proper, leading her around the front of the long-deserted cabins so she could see the lake. He had no desire to look at it, but he understood that she did not share his trauma and therefore his dislike. She very well might have gone swimming in said lake had he given her group enough time to reach it. He thought maybe the sight of it, glittering prettily in the sunlight, might bring her some manner of ease.

The building which housed toilets and shower facilities was a short distance behind the cabins themselves at the top of a small rise. There was no door, only two open archways set at each end of the long rectangle separated by a short dividing wall, and he led her to the far-most side where the sign marked it as being the one for women. He had never used the bathroom here himself. He rarely had need of it, and when he did have need it was far less bother to simply see to it in the woods as the animals did. That he did not expect of her. He was determined to see to her comfort, and the very least he could do was give her this.

Gesturing for her hands, he extracted the key to the cuffs from the coat pocket. Her brow furrowed, skeptical, though she offered her hands for him to undo the lock and release the right one. An odd combination of comprehension, gratitude, and dislike sparked in her eyes, and for a moment he felt an unexpected prickle of guilt.

Unwrapping the length of chain from when he'd looped it around his hand, he nodded toward the doorway, turning so that his back was to the dividing wall. At first she didn't move, as if torn, until again the needs of her body outweighed everything else.

The chain slithered along the ground, uncoiling as she walked inside, and it occurred to him that the length might not be sufficient. He felt the precise moment when she stopped, and was grateful he hadn't had to come up with a solution to that particular problem. He waited patiently, watching a pair of squirrels race up and down the base of a gnarled old tree, quarreling in their raucous, chittering language over some insult or morsel of food.

He heard the rush of water; once quick and brief, a second time a steady flow lasting a number of seconds broken by movement. The dragging scrape of metal against cement reached him as she rounded the corner.

Angling his head to look at her he saw several feet of chain gathered in her free hand, the hint of wildness in her brown eyes as they met his unveiled one. For the first time he saw the hint of green in them, soft and woodsy like new moss. Her hands clenched about the loops of chain. Then, like a deer at the snap of a twig, she bolted.

He felt the slide of the heavy links through his fingers, the pull of her delicate weight as she fled - a darting pale shape against all the green. And he opened his hand.

~/~

She didn't make it far.

She should have been grateful: he could have simply led her out into the woods and made her squat behind a tree, if he deigned to grant her privacy at all. Yet even the small comforts of toilet paper and a flush felt like rubbing the freedom she no longer had in her face. She had not been grateful in the moment. She had been angry and afraid, neither of which was conducive to making the best decisions.

In spite of her proclivity for more sedentary pastimes such as wedging her nose in a book for hours on end, Whitney was a decent runner. It was how she and Mike had met, after all, on the track field – though she had been there merely for the exercise while he had been doing drills with his soccer team, and quite possibly assumed she was more into the activity than she truly was. Yet even now that she wasn't a sobbing, staggering mess, her hope was small. She was exhausted from lack of sleep and a lack of nourishment, in a strange environment wearing bad shoes, and in no way at her best. But when she had seen the bright sliver of opportunity, she'd had to take it.

Her feet pounded against earth and grass, leaping over roots and patches of undergrowth, dodging around trees at a wild zigzag. There was already a stitch at her side, threatening to become a full-on cramp, her pulse throbbing like a dying thing in her throat, but she pushed through it, clutching the wad of chain tight to her side as she darted through a patch of low bushes.

Something snagged her shirt, tearing, and she felt a prickle of pain across the flesh of her arm. Thorns of some kind. She ignored it, veering sharply to the left. She was fairly sure she had recognized one of the giant old elm trees a she'd just raced past, and if she had she was going the right direction toward trail they had hiked in on. The trail that had taken the better part of a day to traverse…

The faint spark of hope began to waver, already dangerously close to snuffing out even before she caught the flicker of movement out of the corner of her eye.

To look at him, one might think this giant had neither the grace nor the capacity for quick movement, and one would have been wrong. She had known that: had seen the proof of it when he'd turned on her that horrible night, illuminated by flame. She should have harbored no illusions, even for a second, that she could have outrun him. She could not have. Not at a dead sprint across a straight line on even terrain in perfect health. So when she saw him emerge from the trees, surging straight for her fast as some gigantic cat, she felt the defeat crash into her the instant before he did.

He seized her around the middle, arms curving beneath her breasts and about her hips to lift her straight off her feet; effectively - and literally - stopping her dead in her tracks.

She threw her head back and screamed, as much for her fury and her frustration as the fear kicking high in the back of her throat. It was a wrenching, wailing riot of sound that raked at her vocal chords, but she didn't care. What did it matter if she screamed herself mute when she might be dead tomorrow?

"Let go!"

She drove her elbow viciously back into his ribs as he folded her against his chest. He didn't react, so she kicked him, slamming her foot against his leg so hard that she felt the impact burn all the way up to her knee.

" _Let go_ of me, you- _-_ "

A hand as wide as her face closed over her mouth, forcing her to swallow down the scathing insult ready on her tongue. She very seriously considered biting down, but thought better of it when his grip firmed to press her head back against his shoulder. He was far stronger than she, and making sure she knew it. In this position he could snap her in half like a candy cane with little effort, and while she didn't think he would...she really couldn't be sure, could she? What if she'd been lulled into some semblance of safety, assuming he wouldn't simply decide she was more trouble than she was worth and kill her as he'd initially planned?

The exhausted, half-feverish part of her brain considered whether that was such a bad thing. At least if she was dead it would be over – no more doubt, no more fear, no more waiting for something even more terrible to happen. But she quashed the thought as soon as it bloomed.

She didn't want to die. And if she was going to die, it would not be like this.

Whitney went limp, letting the tension ease from her limbs as much as she feasibly could when dangling several feet above the ground. She dragged in a steadying breath, her lungs filling beneath the steady grip of his arm and bringing with it the scents of earth, pine, and leather. Strange. She would have expected him to reek of death, blood and stale sweat and metal, but that wasn't the case at all. Oddly enough, it wasn't altogether unpleasant.

His hand tightened ever so slightly upon her mouth, and for whatever reason that was when it clicked. The gesture was not a threat. He wasn't telling her that if she screamed he would wring her neck. It said, very simply: _please, don't_.

In retrospect, she supposed it very much could have been a threat and she was simply reading meaning into it that hadn't been there. Yet, somehow even when the thought occurred to her later she had trouble believing it, in part for the distinct impression she got of patient tolerance – that of someone dealing with a particularly stubborn and bratty child. And in part because when her mouth snapped shut, he immediately removed the hand.

Reaching down to seize the chain trailing down to skim the dirt, he wrapped it twice securely around his palm before lowering her back to the ground. He did not release her right away, holding her there for a moment as she regained her footing, and very slowly retracting his arm from around her waist. Fingertips brushed her ribs, and it took everything she had not to wrench away.

He straightened, and he didn't simply stand – he _loomed_ over her, great beast that he was. It was the first time she had found herself standing toe to toe with him, and while she was taller than average with thanks to her great-grandmother's supposed Amazonian blood, the crown of her head reached no higher than the middle of his chest. Intimidated in spite of herself, she shrank back.

His hand shot out, grasping her roughly above the elbow and stopping her short. She squeaked, and bit deep into her cheek to keep the sound from becoming something greater, the coppery tang of blood filling her mouth.

His gaze was focused down, at a spot on the ground behind her. Puzzled, she twisted to look, and caught the glint of metal winking out from beneath the dirt and scattered leaves not inches from the back of her heel. Sharp metal teeth. Her heart stuttered in her chest.

She had almost walked right into another bear trap.

When she looked up again it was to find him looking at her, single visible eye trained sharply on her face. With a start, she realized that the eye she had only ever seen at night or in shadow was not dark at all. It was steely blue, almost gray. He studied her in his ever constant silence, and she found herself thinking that his gaze didn't seem like the gaze of a mindless killer, or the sick, twisted bastard she had nearly called him. But he _was_. She had seen Amanda strung up from a tree like live bait and left to burn, seen the skin and muscle shredded beneath the teeth of a trap identical to the one he had just kept her from stepping into. It had been the work of a hunter, an exterminator: cold, calculated. Uncaring.

Something twisted, her stomach rebelling as if it meant to reject the cold ravioli she had managed to choke down. Whether it was the remembered smell of charred hair and fat or the sight of Richie's head sliced apart like a melon, the feel of blood and torn skin slick between her fingers, or if it was simply that she was tired and scared and her body couldn't take any more without a release. Her insides shuddered, her eyes stinging as the tears gathered.

 _Why._ Why keep her and not the others? Why feed her, why not let her rot in her own waste? Why stop her from walking into the trap? Why do any of this? If he meant to torture her, why wait? If he wanted her for the use of her body, then why not simply pin her down and do it? It wasn't as if she was capable of fending him off: he'd proven that impossible several times over. What else could there possibly be?

He bent, one arm looping just under her backside, rose to sling her over a shoulder as he had before to carry her resolutely back to her prison.

When he finally put her down again it was to deposit her on her little bed in the corner. Her body sagged into the soft surface, and she decided as he looped the chain back through the metal ring and snapped the padlock closed that she would let herself sleep. It was going to happen at some point, the body could only stay awake for so long. And if he decided while she slept to come down and cut her throat then so much the better. At least she'd be oblivious.

Long, broad fingers closed around her free wrist, clearly intending to shackle her anew. Yet he paused in the midst of securing the cuff in place, turning her arm in his grasp. She saw his eye narrow, creasing as if with a frown, and glanced down. The skin of her wrist was an angry red, chafed raw where the metal had rubbed and scraped, only some of which had been due to having used the cuff to mark the wall. His thumb traced the edge of what had become a sickly yellowing bruise and it was such a strange thing to do, almost tender, and she hated him for it.

Balling her hand into a fist she snatched it from his grasp.

"Stop it," she snapped, and there was hardly any anger left to put spark in her words. There was little room for anything but weary defeat. "Don't pretend you give a damn about me. Just do what you're going to do and get it over with or get the hell away from me."

For a long moment he was motionless, and she imagined she saw confusion in the subtle sideways tilt of his head. He reached again for her wrist, the movement slow and almost cautious, but she didn't fight him. There was an obvious care when he closed the manacle about her, but she was far beyond caring. As soon as he rose, she was curling up on her meager bed and closing her eyes.

It was not the most comfortable place she had ever attempted to sleep. Still, the bedding was clean, smelling faintly of detergent, and she wasn't cold. By the time he made it to the steps she was already slipping into a haze.

It occurred to her only when she awoke that he could have stopped her escape attempt from the very beginning. All he'd had to do was hold on to the chain and let her tear her own arms from their sockets.

Instead, he had chosen to let her run.


	3. Rocks and Water

**CHAPTER 3** **  
** **Rocks and Water**

~/13/~

It was dark when she woke, marking the fourth night she had spent down here in the ground.

Whitney rubbed her eyes, squinting as she sat up, not having expected the warm yellow light that filled the earthen room. Lights had been strung throughout the tunnels, still somehow wired to electricity, but it still grew intensely dark when the sun went down. Nighttime made the space seem smaller, tighter, oppressive and dank like the cave it truly was when there was no sunlight to spill down from the cracks above her and remind her there was still a world outside her prison.

The previous nights she had spent in darkness, but when she turned her head now it was to find a little battery operated camping lantern had been left atop her crate alongside a new can of mixed vegetables that had been opened, covered with a plate, and topped with a clean spoon. There was fresh water, too, and – as she saw as she glanced down – a pair of blankets that had been left folded neatly by her feet as she slept.

She was a little chilly, she noted, and her head and wrists both ached something fierce. The sleep had helped, but not by a lot. There was plenty else to make up the difference. Dehydration. Chafing. Her body was sore, the muscles in her legs and lower back tight and strained from her panicked dash through the woods. Panicked and pointless. It had been stupid to run, not the least while he had been right there to see her do it. Oh well.

Reaching for the water, she drank in measured swallows until she got half the jug down. She lifted the plate and poked at the contents of the can, and while her belly squeezed and groaned longingly at the prospect of food, she could only stomach a mouthful of cold, slimy carrots before giving up and recovering it with a shudder.

A rustling noise caught her ear, a light scratching. A muted squeak. Rats.

She sat up a little straighter, peering around what floor she could see from her vantage point to try and spot them. Rats didn't bother her. Her mother had been a teacher for almost twenty years before the cancer and had kept rats as classroom pets for at least half of that time. During the summers she'd bring them home for Whitney to take care of, though her older brother Clay had kept a wide berth. Clay hated rodents of all kinds – something Whitney had teased him about endlessly when they were little. Still, there was a very real difference between pets and wild animals, and she made a note to keep an eye out for them. She didn't need to get bit on top of everything else.

The creak and thud of the trapdoor opening came a moment later, followed by steady, plodding steps. She wasn't sure why he made so much noise down here when she knew he could move in complete silence. The only thing she could think of was that it either took effort to maintain the stealthy quiet, or he was making a conscious effort on her behalf. The latter seemed far-fetched to the degree of being ridiculous. Still, a part of her wondered. He didn't like it when she screamed, which she was wont to do if spooked. Maybe it wasn't so ridiculous after all, then, that he might take pains to keep from startling her.

The light preceded him, spilling from a second lantern hanging from one big hand as he rounded the corner. Several tiny furry bodies scurried about his feet as he descended the steps, and she noticed he took special care to avoid stepping on them. She watched this with bemused curiosity, for the maneuvering seemed more a result of worry than distaste, as though he were concerned he might hurt the creatures rather than that he might end up with smushed rat innards on the sole of his boot.

 _Huh_.

She couldn't have said why, but this careful consideration for animals so small and so often regarded as mere vermin gave her an odd sense of relief. Whatever else he might have been, stalker, murderer, if he didn't hurt animals then he couldn't be a complete psychopath. Not that that helped _her_. It still managed to alleviate some of the tension in her back and shoulders.

He approached, more quietly now that he'd seen she was awake and aware of him, lowering the second lantern to the crate and sinking into a crouch. He glanced at the food, tilting the plate to look inside the can and finding it still full. The faint frown line appeared at the inner corner of his eye.

Shifting that eye to her he tapped the surface of the plate, at once question and subtle chastisement.

"I know," she hastened to say, "I'm sorry. It's not that I don't appreciate it, it's just…" She struggled, trying to think of how to say it without coming across as ungrateful or bratty. One shoulder lifted in an uncomfortable little half-shrug. "Canned things aren't usually meant to be eaten cold."

The frown line remained, though she thought it might had become consideration rather than disapproval. Seeming to brush aside the matter of her eating habit – or lack thereof – he extracted something out of a pocket and set it on the crate. A flat plastic box, once white and liberally dented, marked with a red cross. A first aid kit?

She didn't catch his reach for her wrists, but didn't flinch when she felt him touch her. With a twist of the little key and a click of the lock the manacle fell from her left wrist, revealing a sore strip of skin. Popping open the lid of the kit, he extracted several packets of gauze, a roll of bandaging, cloth tape, and set to work.

There were many thing wrong with it. For one, she seriously doubted his hands had been anywhere close to sterile in years, and for another, there was no ointment in the kit. Still, the basics were there; he padded the sides of each hand below thumb and the outside of her palm, securing gauze somewhat clumsily with the tape before wrapping them in a generous length of the ace bandage. It would help keep the chafing to a minimum, stop the cold metal from further aggravating the already irritated skin, and prevent any open wounds from forming. Whatever his reasons for doing it, she was grateful.

Having secured her much more comfortably back in her cuffs he began tucking the rest of the tape and bandaging away. Feeling chilly, Whitney reached for one of the blankets, jumping when something slipped from the pocket of her jeans and fell to the dirt between them with a clatter.

The locket. She had forgotten all about it in the midst of everything, forgotten that she'd distractedly slipped it in her pocket when Mike had dragged her to look at something else in the creepy house. The clasp had come undone and the piece lay open, pictures turned down.

And he was staring down at it, great body gone still as stone.

After a tense breath he reached for it, cradling the pendant between thick fingers and turning it over to peer inside. There was a strange reverence to the way he held the necklace, as though it were solid gold and not cheap plated brass, handling it like a wounded bird, not a piece of jewelry on a dirty faded ribbon.

She experienced a moment of apprehension as he ran a fingertip across the image on the right side of the locket to brush away a bit of dirt – the overpowering sense that she should have left the thing where she'd found it. There were a number of things she _should have done_ , starting with refusing point blank to go on this farce of a camping trip. Still, she should have put it down, left it pointedly and respectfully in the mausoleum where they had found it. But she hadn't. She had taken it with her, tucked it somewhere safe and close because it had been a treasure and subconsciously she had tried to treat it as such.

His gaze lifted from the locket cupped in his palm, the blue starkly pronounced in the bright glow of artificial light. He regarded her closely, intently, as though if he looked hard enough he might be able to see past the exterior, past skin and bone and matter to the core of her. As though trying to figure something out. She understood the sentiment. She herself felt like she was staring at bits of a whole, and she couldn't quite piece them together.

Pressing the locket closed, he held it there for a second, hesitating very slightly before he reached to slip the ribbon over her head so that the pendant rested against her chest.

There was something she was missing here – something incredibly, vitally important. Something in the way he was looking at her, at the locket where it lay at her sternum.

What was it?

She remembered the clasp had been undone before too, easily opened. She remembered examining the two pictures. Mike had said Whitney resembled the woman on the right, dark-haired and lovely in a fine, elfin kind of way. She had scoffed at him: half an automatic response to being referred to as pretty in any way, whether or not she believed herself to be, half due to the sheer discomfort she had felt being there in the house.

 _Why_ did that matter? Because it did; she felt it deep down where she held the absolute truths of who she was. But she couldn't quite put it together, as if the illumination was a candle that hovered just out of her reach.

The old abandoned house. The child's bedroom, at once untouched and clamoring with ghosts for each toy, each book, each piece of scattered clothing. The little bed. The bear atop the dust-choked pillow, obviously loved. The name carved into the headboard. The locket with its delicate brass windows framing two tiny pictures: one side clean and shining and cared for, the other scratched and dirty as if defaced by an angry hand.

 _"It looks like you."_

No. Surely not.

His fingertips brushed the embossed surface. His nails were overlong, the ends jagged, clogged with dirt, the cuticles outlined with grime, but the touch was soft. She had thought him the copycat of a spooky bedtime story, an impostor, a sick psychopath with an affinity for playing games when in reality he had been something else entirely.

The boy that had drowned but had not died. Orphaned, abandoned, traumatized.

The girl who was only alive because she resembled his dead mother.

Her lips parted, the name held burning at the tip of her tongue

"…Jason?"

His head snapped up, the muscles of his shoulders bunching beneath the layers of tattered clothing as he stared at her, and she knew she had guessed correctly.

The use of his name had snared his attention, that was for certain, but abruptly she wondered whether to do so had been wise. A sudden wildness had entered his lone visible eye, a convoluted tangle of emotions that were there and gone too rapidly to trace let alone define. His fingers curled, hand closing about the locket, and she wondered if he wasn't about to rip it from around her neck regardless of the fact that he had put it there.

Tension coiled, thick as smoke in the air between them. "It's ok," she said shakily, trying for a soothing cadence and failing utterly.

At her words he leapt into motion, dropping the locket and surging to his feet, retreating as though she had stabbed him. With a rustle of tattered cloth he was gone, a silent shadow vanishing into the corridor.

Shaken, Whitney let out the breath she had been holding in a trembling rush.

It turned out Wade's ghost stories hadn't been simply stories. Jason Voorhees was very much alive, stalking the grounds of the place of his childhood torment and slaughtering all who dared enter. A phantom – a ghost in the trees, this land of blood and bones. And for one brief instant, as she had stared into that one bright blue eye, she hadn't seen the monster that had abducted her, restrained her. He hadn't looked like the vicious beast that had murdered people in front of her.

He had looked lost, afraid…a little boy trapped in the dark.

Wait. What?

No, no, no. _No._

Nothing had changed. Everyone else was dead: Mike, gone, Amanda burned alive, Richie's skull cleaved open, and she had no idea what horrible end had befallen Wade. They hadn't even been her friends. They had been Mike's friends. She hadn't even really liked them and yet to see them dead, to see them _die…_

She could not forget that. He was not a lost puppy, not a scared child. He was a murderer – a monster. He had killed her boyfriend in front of her. He had kept his mother's _head_ in a _hole_ in the _bathroom wall_.

A shudder coursed its way down her back, and she reached anew for a blanket, wrapping it around her shoulders and huddling in her corner.

The locket bumped gently against her breastbone, an oddly heavy weight for such a light piece. She lifted it away with both hands, running the pad of her thumb across the faded floral pattern on its worn surface before sliding a nail between the catch and clicking it open to revel the two photographs inside. She could see some of the resemblance in the woman now: in the face structure, the long darker hair. Nevertheless, it didn't seem enough to warrant Jason confusing her for his mother. She could only assume that's what had happened, why he had ceased his effort to kill her precisely when he had seen her face, why he was caring for her so diligently – if misguidedly.

Her gaze shifted automatically to the other picture. The image of the boy depicted there was so distorted and scratched that she could hardly make out his face, only a vague outline of a head, overlarge in proportion to the pair of skinny shoulders below it and somewhat misshapen, though not as much as she had expected from the stories. Hydrocephalus maybe; or something else with a similar effect on cranial shape.

Why had he given the locket back to her? Clearly it meant a great deal to him – something which made rather more sense now that she knew him for who he was. So why drape it around her neck like a talisman and not put it back in the jewelry box where Mike had found it? Did he still think her some reincarnation of the woman who had raised him, or had she ruined that illusion? Perhaps this very second he was mustering the willpower to come back down and rip her head off for the imposter that she was.

Well…it wasn't anything she hadn't already expected.

Another muted rustle sounded from the other side of her crate. Reaching into the can, Whitney scooped out a couple mushy peas and carrots and tossed them to the other side of the room in the hopes of tempting them to scurry elsewhere.

~/~

There was relief in the open – in the spaces between the trees – and Jason relished it as he cut a path through the undergrowth.

"… _Jason?"_

It had been half a question on her tongue: her lips curving cautiously around the syllables that formed his name as though she feared they might have the power to end her. His name on her voice, soft and hesitant. She might as well have kicked him right in the throat.

He had stared at her: at the girl who peered up at him from that face that called up faint childhood memories, hazy, but warm and comfortable. Someone who had once cared for him – _loved_ him. Yearning had risen up like a tide inside him, choking him, _drowning_ him. Until she had looked at him that way, awe flexing and tangling around the thread of fear in her eyes and he had known without a shred of doubt that she was not his mother. Empty sorrow pulled at the gaping place inside him that was all wistful longing and loneliness and the utter, unending futility of it all.

He had fled.

...and he had no idea what to do now. He was overwhelmed, rattled and out of control and he didn't like one bit.

His strides slowed until they gradually ceased, and he was left standing in the middle of a glade, hands at his sides. It was early morning now, the sun just about to broach the horizon. There was already a pale yellow hue to the sky to the east, faint and almost buttery, turning the tops of the evergreens a rich sage. Even this simple, everyday occurrence of color and light had his mind arrowing back to the little corner in the tunnels where he had chained a girl who was no what he had thought she was. A girl who had trespassed, whose every breath was in violation of the oath he had made.

The sole reason he had left her living, kept her, cared for her, had been directly tied to that faint shining hope that in hindsight seemed foolish to an extreme. Surely that meant he must kill her now, return her to her friends in the earth as tithe for her trespass...after he had fed her. Tended her wounds.

He recalled the look on her face the day before, when he had brought her back: the hopeless, empty marriage of rage and despair. No one had ever looked at him that way before. Not one of the faceless thousands he had dispatched, not his mother at her most angry or disappointed. He had not thought he could still feel something like guilt, yet he had felt it all the same.

But he could not lay blame on her for the choices he had made. He had seen something of his mother in her, and he had chosen his actions in response. She had trespassed, yes, and he could not rightly say that he had not punished her. He punished her still by refusing her the freedom she so clearly wanted. Was that payment enough?

He didn't like to be the cause of suffering if he could help it. His task was a simple one to be gotten over and done with as quickly and cleanly as possible. And here he was, causing her to suffer. The solution was simple, yet the idea of killing her – of slitting her throat, of severing spine or crushing skull – did not sit well. He didn't know why, or at what point it had become so, but for some reason he could not abide the thought of killing her. Which was…disorienting.

He felt it before he heard it: the chaotic flurry and rustle of movement. The steps. The bloodbeat. He felt it half an instant before the rage flooded in.  
 **  
**It always began as anger. Every time he felt the reverberation of a step, a heartbeat, heard the noise of breath or tool, the response was always the same sharp slice of fury. The rage had long since shed the form of an emotion. It never abated; as ever present as if it had set itself into his bones like a fever that no amount of purging could burn off. It didn't seem to matter how many people he killed and buried. They never stopped coming and his anger never left him. Yet at the end of every season, as winter drove off even the most hardened of potential hunters, he found himself dragging in answer of every footstep, every triggered tripwire, every trap. The weariness was as constant as the anger, and just as inevitable. He found himself trudging through the snow wondering why he was still alive when he had no real need for food, no real need for sleep. When all he seemed to do was exist until the next trespasser crossed his land.

The anger flowed more easily than usual, catching like a spark to kerosene in his veins, his skin, his lungs. His body turned before he had even consciously willed it, angling toward the source of the sounds, eager for something to focus on aside from his overwhelming confusion. Something that made sense.

He tracked the source of the sound to the stream that ran through the eastern end of his territory. A lone man walking along the water, pack slung across his back and a dog at his heels, tail wagging contentedly as the man whistled an off-key tune. Jason kept his distance at first, trailing their steps in silence until they reached thicker ground cover. They were close to the border here, and Jason preferred to make his kills where disposal of the bodies left behind could be done more efficiently to minimize discovery.

The dog noticed him first – aware as all animals were to a far more adept degree than humans – several times straying from its human to sniff warily at the tree-line, once going so far as to growl softly, concerned.

"Bonnie, shush!"

The hiker whistled, bidding the dog to come. She didn't, having planted herself directly in front of the trees behind which Jason stood, regarding him as he regarded her.

As a rule, Jason did not harm animals without a reason – not unless they attempted him harm or were to be food – and he was hoping he wasn't going to have to do so now.

The dog was of medium size, with a short golden coat and flopping triangular ears. He remembered one of the camp counselors had had a dog like this when he was young. While the counselor herself hadn't been the nicest of people – she certainly hadn't been the meanest, either – she had let him play with her dog for as long as he'd wanted. He remembered running his hands over the soft black fur of the dog's back and belly, remembered laughing at the swipe of a lolling tongue across his face, for the dog hadn't cared that he was deformed. The dog hadn't thought him a freak. The dog had loved him purely because he'd shown it love in return.

He wondered what had happened to that dog, whether the girl had been one of the people his mother had killed.

"What's the matter, girl?"

The golden dog whined, head drooping slightly as her dark eyes glanced toward her master before darting back to Jason. No, he wouldn't have to hurt this animal. He sighed, grateful, and stepped out from the cover of trees.

He used the hunting knife rather than the machete, needing somehow to feel the life beneath his hands as he bled it into the earth. There was a bit of a chase at first, as the hiker staggered across the stream, hurling course language at him – language that would have earned Jason a sound smack under the chin had he possessed the voice to use it. The man went as far as to shed his pack and hurl it, thinking it would somehow stall Jason long enough to make a difference.

It did not.

In the end he drove the knife up through the soft space between jaw and throat, slicing through windpipe and spinal cord with a single clean thrust. Blood spilled down over the back of his hand, washing his sleeve, a baptism of life and death and payment made. By the time he let the body fall, the scale had been balanced, and the dog had fled.

Jason was sorry for that. He might have liked to take her home.

Did the girl like dogs, he wondered? And immediately frowned at the unwanted intrusion upon his thoughts.

Crouching, he opened the hiker's discarded pack, rifling through the contents for anything of potential use. Most of it was useless; bits of paper and plastic, a small metallic contraption that somewhat resembled a two-way radio, clothing much too small for him. There was a packet of crackers and several bags of nuts and dried fruit that he stowed away in a pocket. There was also, to his surprise, a worn little paperback book, the covers dog-eared, pages yellowed with age and love.

He turned it over in his hands, running his fingertips over the white creases. He could read, some. He'd had to. While he had never been competent in the way of book-learning as a child he had managed to grasp and retain what it took to stay alive. He could decipher simple words enough to grasp when something was marked _DANGER_ , or whether something was either toxic or edible.

Other people read for pleasure. He knew this. His mother had read to him from big books full of pictures when he'd been little, some of which were still tucked away on a shelf in his bedroom, gathering dust, unopened for more years than he had bothered to keep track of. Did she like to read? If he brought her a book – something to look at, something to do – if he made her space more like a home and less like a prison, would she be happy?

Happy…

He huffed quietly, a soft exhale of amusement and irritation. Clearly at some point he had determined that he would not be killing her, if he was now prioritizing contentment alongside health and general wellness. He had never been so fickle before, and he wasn't sure he liked it. Nevertheless, he tucked the little book into his pocket alongside the food, and buried the pack and the rest of its contents under a patch of ferns.

He needed to get back. She hadn't eaten the food he'd brought, yet again, and he was starting to worry she was going to get sick.

Jason ate when he was hungry, but such times had become fewer and fewer as time passed, and between what the woods could provide and what he scavenged from the odd trespasser had been more than enough with plenty left over to keep in generous reserve. He hadn't been concerned about keeping her fed until now.

Clearly the canned provisions simply weren't sufficient. The next time he went on a perimeter sweep he would steal a few things from the farm adjacent to the southern border, vegetables and the like. It was summer, there was sure to be something fresh that might tempt her to eat.

Jason tended not to leave his land. If a wayward stranger set foot within his grounds they were dealt with, but mostly these were travelers, hikers, campers, passersby. The locals kept a wide berth. They knew better than to cross the borders. It was a truce of sorts, if an uneasy one. They steered well clear of his land – he did not kill them. Still, every once in a while they mistook themselves and he deemed it fair that if they entered his land he, in turn, could enter theirs. He knew for a fact that the workers who manned Garrick's land tended to treat the territory line a little more loosely than any of the other locals, so he did not feel it out of bounds to extract payment in the form of food if it meant he could feed the girl.

It occurred to Jason that if he was keeping her – as he appeared to be – he should probably refer to her as something other than just _girl_ , even if only in his own mind.

What had her name been?

The boy she'd been walking with – the one he had torn apart from the sheer rage at finding them in his mother's house – the boy that had told her to run. He had called her Whitney. As had the other one, as he'd pleaded with her to help him seconds before Jason had buried a blade deep in his skull.

 _Whitney._

Her name was Whitney.

* * *

 **NOTES:**

I wanted to make a quick note that I'll be playing around with the timeline as it is in the film. I say this now because I referenced a specific moment where, you know, we're actually supposed to believe she wouldn't have figured out who he was until six weeks after being kidnapped. Right.

Until next time - take care!


	4. Fighter

**CHAPTER 4  
Fighter**

~/13/~

 **Day 4**

The day passed in an agony. Hours bypassed hours, traceable solely by the steady change of the sunlight filtering in from above, and as they did Whitney's worry increased.

Clearly using Jason's name had spooked him. She had seen the startled shock in his visible eye, rendering the pupil wide and dark. It hadn't been fear, exactly, but she wasn't sure what else to call it. When had he last heard it spoken aloud, she wondered. Years? Could it have been decades?

If the stories were true – and she was inclined to believe there was at least a kernel of truth to them – then Jason had drowned at the age of eleven or twelve. Or, rather, had been believed to have drowned. The disappearance had been so believable that his mother had lost her mind, murdered a number of camp counselors and done all she could to sabotage the camp itself so that such a thing would never again happen to anyone else's child. But if that was true and he had been there long enough to see her die, had she been so maddened by her grief that she had not seen her own son alive and whole right there in front of her? Whitney supposed it was possible. Stranger things had certainly happened. Or...

Or perhaps the other stories were the true ones. The ones that claimed the little boy had indeed drowned that day and, upon the death of his mother, had been resurrected. Reborn amidst some sacrifice of blood and death to rise anew, a creature of pure rage fated to feed from vengeance.

Honestly, right there in that moment, Whitney would have believed either. But it didn't matter what she believed. Of two things she was absolutely sure. First: regardless of whether he had died or not, he was a living man now. He was not a ghost but a corporeal, sentient being that breathed, thought, and…did not speak. Perhaps _could_ not. Second: since his mother's death, he had been out here alone.

There was an incredible sadness in that, but Whitney didn't allow herself to pursue it. Sad story or no, he was still a sick bastard who got off on killing, and there was no amount of tragedy sufficient to excuse that.

Her stomach gave a wrenching growl and she pressed her hands against her belly, willing it to pass. It had been gnawing angrily at itself since the sun had been pale and watery. Had it been just the hunger, she might have been all right, but her bladder was full past the point of comfort and her wrist was sore from scratching another tally into the wall. Her joints ached from lack of use, and her back muscles were angry with her for spending so much time in a bed not her own. It was hot today: hotter than it had been all summer, and while the space sheltered beneath the earth remained much cooler than it would be outside her clothes had begun to stick uncomfortably to her skin as sweat gathered. She had napped some, knowing she was exhausted and could likely use the sleep, but her dreams had been strange and frightening, and she had stopped trying after a while.

She leaned forward to peer through the grating next to her, at the light spilling in through the patchy floor above, warm and richly golden with that luster of heat that had been absorbing into surfaces all day. It was well into evening now and she had neither seen nor heard any sign of him. Usually by now he had come down at least once – to check her water if nothing else – but he had not, and she was starting to wonder if he would come back at all. She could resign herself to a quick death, to beheading or strangulation, bleeding out. But the idea of slowly starving in a puddle of her own urine had the power to incite a bit of panic.

A raucous clamor of noise shattered the quiet, and Whitney jumped with a squeak, eyes darting around to pinpoint the source. There was no movement anywhere in the tunnel, and hadn't been for hours. Even the rats had meandered off to places beyond her line of sight to wait out the hotter part of the day. It was only by chance that she glanced up and saw the bells. A string of them, lined up along a support beam and tied to a cord that trailed along the tunnel ceiling and disappeared.

 _What on earth...?_

She frowned, sitting up on her knees in an attempt to get a closer look. Upon doing so she discovered that there were more; several other strings of bells and bits of metal clearly rigged to create noise if disturbed lining the beams above her head. What were they, alarms of some kind? Would they go off if she tried to leave? But she wasn't hooked to anything that she could see, and nothing had ever gone off before...unless they weren't for her. He hadn't planned to kidnap her after all, so why – and when – would he have rigged a system to keep her inside?

Wary unease prickled down her spine, the fine hairs at the nape of her neck standing on end. Something about this, and she couldn't have said what, reminded her of the traps, the methodical hunter who planned and schemed and prepared for his kills not only in practical (or paranoid) anticipation of them, but who reveled in them.

The ceiling above her creaked loudly and for the second time she jumped half out of her skin. The trapdoor opened with its usual whine followed by the impact of descent, and Whitney felt her heart leap into her throat.

Her hands were shaking, she realized, clenched into fists and wedged between her knees as if to sink the tremors into the ground. She hadn't been this anxious yesterday. But then she hadn't potentially triggered an emotional reaction and therefore potentially courted her own death quite to the same extent yesterday. The anxiety spiked when she heard the heavy footsteps draw close and Jason's frame came into view, only to ease so quickly it nearly made her dizzy when she saw the bowl cupped in one large hand. Relief spilled in to replace the fear. She had not made a horrible miscalculation, nor had she been abandoned to a horrible death.

There was steam coming from the bowl: fine, thin, wispy tendrils of it that became visible as he drew near on silent feet. She almost thought she was hallucinating until he set it down in front of her and she felt the heat of it on her face, and the relief bloomed to an almost hysterical height.

It was soup...and it was _hot._

How exactly he had heated it Whitney had not a clue, and nor, frankly, did she much care. It was chicken noodle, the thick, hearty kind full of heavy egg noodles and actual chunks of meat and carrot rather than a weak both with two or three pieces of noodle and a few shreds of chicken floating around. He'd brought a sleeve of crackers with it, which were whole grain and full of seeds and a little bit stale but again, she hadn't cared. The soup was hot and unreasonably delicious, and she could have cried had she not been far too busy stuffing her face.

He watched her eat, which might have been unnerving except she was about a thousand percent sure he did so just to ensure that she ate. Which she did. Heartily and at record speed. In fact, she ate so fast it was a wonder her stomach didn't cramp, wolfing down the entire can of soup and two thirds of the crackers before slowing.

She wrapped the crackers back up, twisting the plastic closed and considering that she might regret having eaten so many later. It had just been so good to eat without every bite feeling like a herculean challenge, and it felt so good to feel _full_ for the first time in days. Even a little too full.

"I—"

But he was already reaching for the padlock to release the chain, so she shut her mouth and waited before following him up and out.

It wasn't until he was undoing one of her cuffs outside the bathroom that she noticed the blood.

At first she couldn't tell what she was looking at. The coat itself was dark, an indeterminate color somewhere between gray and brown, but the end of his sleeve had been stiff where it had brushed her wrist as he unlocked the cuff and when she looked down, she saw the color there was off. Darker than before, and rusty brown, as though something had soaked into it and dried there. She had looked resolutely away before she could think too hard about what it meant until she was free to scramble into the first stall.

She sat there for a moment after relieving the pain in her bladder, face cupped in her hands and trying to swallow down whatever was bubbling up inside her. She couldn't tell if it was panic or sorrow or anger. Couldn't tell if she wanted to cry or to scream, or kick the stall door until it dented, or all of it at once. She didn't want to think about the person he must have killed. But it was too late for that.

After spending so much time in the clinic, she knew what blood looked like in almost every form and consistency. It shouldn't have bothered her. It _shouldn't_ have, but it did. Because she knew how that blood must have gotten there, and for all that his hand had been clean, it did not erase the pain that self-same hand must have caused. She couldn't stop herself from wondering whether that person she would never know had died quickly, or if they had suffered…as Mike had suffered.

Once summoned the thought would not be banished. Just like that her head was full of Mike's screams, the popping snap of vertebrae. All she could see was the splintered floorboards, enormous hands closing around his leg, fisting in his shirt, dragging him down. The blood bursting from between his lips as he screamed for her to run, the pain in his face eclipsed solely by the utter, primal terror of a prey animal being devoured. Which was precisely what he had been. Prey, vermin. A pest to exterminate. Yet it wasn't purely the same, because neither of those things adequately described the rage with which he had been eliminated.

With Amanda it had been purpose and Richie, practicality. But Mike…with Mike it had been _rage:_ the vengeful fury of a doomed ghost, the need to punish. It had been brutal in the extreme, and Whitney knew she would see and hear the echoes of it in her nightmares for as long as she lived.

Whitney squeezed her eyes shut, clasping her hands tight over her ears as if she could block the images out, as if just maybe she could force herself to wake from the nightmare she was in now, this minute. But when she opened her eyes she was still in the crappy little bathroom stall in a log-cabin style building from the '70s out in the woods, in the middle of nowhere. There was still a chain dangling from her wrist, attached to the hand of a killer. There was no waking up from reality, no matter how awful.

God, she missed Mike. Persistently cheerful Mike with his brain – and sometimes mouth – that wouldn't shut up. Mike would have come up with some idea of what to do. But…it might not have been the best one. It had been _his_ idea to stroll through the creepy campground and creepier house, after all, and she who had sensed the wrongness of it. While it felt awful in the extreme to think it, _she_ was the one still standing. Somehow. Maybe she would have been no better off with him. Although she wouldn't have been so alone.

Her lungs expanded as she forced the breath in, and then out. Hiding in here bought her nothing. It changed nothing.

Standing, she pulled her pants back on and trudging out to the sinks to wash up. The mirror was dirty and scratched, and the face she saw reflected in it fit there. She was pale and dirty; there were shadows under her eyes, her hair stringy and hanging lank about her neck. But there was food in her belly and she was, for the most part, unhurt. And she had her mind.

She wasn't beaten yet. She was her mother's daughter – and if Ellen Miller could be going on her fourth year enduring the cancer that was supposed to have killed her off after two, then Whitney could find a way to free herself.

There was a way out…there had to be.

The water from the tap was cold. Frankly she was still rather surprised there was still running water in the camp's vicinity. She'd heard the grieving mother had done her damnedest to make the camp and the surrounding area as uninhabitable as possible: setting fires, vandalizing the wells, among other things. Evidently it hadn't been enough to shut the place down, or they had reconstructed the plumbing. Either way, she was grateful for the clean water and grateful for the chill as she splashed her face and neck, half to calm and half to cool down.

The chain rattled at her wrist, and she blinked. How long had she been in here? Quite a while, she'd guess, yet he hadn't come in after her. Any of the other men she knew – Clay probably most of all – would have at least yanked on the chain a couple times for her to hurry the hell up.

When she went outside, she found him waiting where she had left him, standing with his back to the dividing wall, the utter picture of patience. But then hunters were nothing if not patient, and that was exactly what he was. Precise and deadly, and far more intelligent than local legends would have had her believe. She felt the shudder ripple down her spine.

He turned to her as she exited the bathroom, a glint of light playing off the machete holstered at his side. She tensed automatically, though he had made no reach for it, the recollections of death and blood still fresh at the forefront of her mind – and she would have sworn he saw it. He'd caught the flinch, certainly, but something in the way he reached for her hand to secure the manacle once again was more cautious than usual. Did he think she meant to run again? That she might try to loop the chain around his neck and pull? An interesting idea, but one she dismissed the instant it came to her. Even if she somehow managed to accomplish getting anything around his neck when it was so far away from her, she was nowhere near strong enough to accomplish anything beyond that much. She eyed the thick muscle that she could see below the edge of the sackcloth and wouldn't have been shocked to learn he could tear through the metal links with neck strength alone.

Mike had been strong, in the way the average twenty-five-year-old guy who enjoyed the odd jog and trip to the gym was strong. _This_ man could in no way be described as average. He was built like a draft horse, heavy of shoulders and thick-waisted, bulky, but in the way of purpose rather than excess. His body was powerful because he used it; his life had shaped him upon a foundation of nature and necessity, genetics and demand. She had never before seen anyone so physically intimidating. It was as if the force of his anger had bolstered his development to forge a weapon perfectly crafted for murder. Because it had not only made him strong, but made him quick and quiet – a combination as unsettling as it was efficiently deadly.

She felt the chain pull slightly at her wrists. He had begun the trek back to the trapdoor as she stared, but upon feeling the tension in her tether he had stopped immediately. The chain slackened and he looked back at her over one shoulder, a faint question in the subtle tilt of his shrouded head. She stayed where she was, testing the waters, very aware that doing so might result in something she didn't like – and was met with nothing but still more patient waiting. He wasn't going to drag her, wasn't going to risk the injury it might do her. He didn't need to say it, didn't need to speak. She just...knew. If anything, that only confused her more.

Why should he care if he dragged her all the way across the campground and through the woods? Why should he care if her wrists were bloody and scraped down to the tendons? She didn't understand this. If he didn't want to kill her, and he didn't want anything from her – as he appeared not to – then why was he keeping her alive? Why house a prisoner for no reason? Why waste the resources, the time, the energy? Just... _why?_

Whitney stepped down off the shallow platform onto which the cinder-block building had been constructed, dry dirt and gravel scuffing under the soles of her shoes. He took half a step in response, as if in question, in the direction of the house – which she answered by following. Better to behave and not rouse suspicion. Better to make him think her resigned to her fate in captivity. She did take her time on the walk back, however, relishing the evening air on her face, neck, and chest.

It wasn't exactly cool. Even out here in the woods with no pavement the earth still absorbed the heat from a day's worth of full sun and clung to it, but there was just enough of a breeze to lift the hair from the back of her neck and hit the patches of sweat soaked through her shirt, to give an imitation of something close to cool. The movement was even better. She thought it every time he brought her outside: that she had never given nearly enough appreciation to just taking a walk, that even this deceptively complex series of motions of joints and muscles and tendons that she so often took for granted could offer a feeling of such relief. It wasn't that she couldn't stand in the tunnel – she could, if she chose – but her leash was kept quite short down there, which made even pacing laps around her little corner impossible. Out here she could stretch her back and legs, work out some of the tension and kinks that accumulated when a body was stuck in a single position for too long.

She considered asking for more time – just to stay out here for a little longer. He could tether her to a tree, for all she cared. She would walk around and around it a hundred times and be quite cheerful about it. But she didn't ask, for fear that any variation to the pattern might draw attention she didn't want.

As always, he lowered her down first: broad hands circling her waist and lifting her straight off the ground like she might have a housecat. He never let her go until he was sure she'd got her footing, either, which was...oddly considerate, in a strange sort of way. Rather like the bathroom breaks, and the hot food. Whitney considered that as he dropped down beside her. He had to stoop slightly to enter completely, before the ground sank in a gradual decline down to the main chamber in which she currently resided. Nothing had forced him to do any of those things. He hadn't had to feed her, hadn't had to do anything in response to her complaint, let alone the rest of it. Even if he'd decided she wasn't who he thought she was yet still couldn't bring himself to kill her directly, he could simply have let her starve. Surely that meant he still wanted something from her...right? Was she obsessing about that? Probably, but honestly, what else was she supposed to do aside from find some clever way of escaping.

He didn't linger after securing her chain and gathering her dishes in a way that was surreally domestic. He checked her water, and had she imagined the way his eye had flickered over her before he turned and left? It wouldn't have surprised her if she had. It was dark already down there, even though the sun had only just begun to set in earnest.

Reaching for the battery lantern left within reach upon her crate she pressed the switch to turn it on, filling the corner with a warm yellow glow. The light made the tunnel appear darker than before, more pressing and sinister somehow, as though it was a reminder that nasty things lurked in dark places.

Lifting the lantern, she rose up on her knees and examined the lock securing the chain to its metal ring. She tugged experimentally and both ring and chain held fast. No way she was going to be able to pull the thing out of the wall, or the lock open – not that she had really thought she could. Even if she had, it would have left her to attempt fleeing once again without the use of her hands and lugging the heavy chain. Not ideal. She set the lantern back down on the crate, holding her hands up to the light to study the manacles around her wrists. They were old, not quite what she might consider antique, but old enough to be well removed from what were used by the police or the security guards at the clinic.

Draping the chain where it connected to the cuffs between her knees she held on and cautiously pulled, twisting her wrist one way and the other in the hopes that she might be able to wrestle her way free. The bandaging rumpled and bunched up, preventing this. But even if it hadn't Whitney wasn't confident it would have worked. Her captor was too smart to clap her in manacles she had any chance of slipping out of.

She studied the locks on the cuffs, chewing anxiously at her lower lip. The metal was stained dark with age, but she could just make out the little crevices where the key would go. Maybe...could she pick them?

Casting about for something to use, something thin and long and preferably metal that might serve as a tool and nearly knocked the lantern over in her haste to check the other side of the crate. She caught it before it could fall and break. And then she stilled, gazing down at the device cupped between her bound hands. An idea had just lit in her mind – a match struck in a dark room – that might just work.

Setting the lantern carefully down on the edge of the crate, she settled in to wait.

~/~

Jason had made it almost a third of the way around the lake before he realized the book was still in his pocket.

There was always work to do: a perimeter to walk, traps and tripwires to check and reset, weapons to maintain. Simply the task of doing the rounds of the lake territory could take upwards of half a day, and he had been slower to accomplish most things lately due to the undeniable alteration to his daily pattern that was the girl. That was Whitney.

The feat of heating the soup had been a matter of hope, gritted teeth, and pure dumb luck. He'd spent hours rummaging through the cabins for something he could use to produce heat strong enough to cook with. There was no power to the house anymore; either, he assumed, because its electricity had come from a different source than that of the camp and the tunnel generators, or because his mother had cut it in her endeavors to make the place inhabitable. Although, even if there had been, he would have had no idea how to use the stove. _If_ the stove was electric. He had no idea. He could light a fire, he supposed, though he had spent enough time observing campers to know that fire was not always a reliable tool for such purposes and would take long enough to make it a last resort.

It was luck and luck alone that he had found the thing he thought might be called a hotplate, and more luck still that he had a vague memory of how it was used. The cabins were still connected to a power grid – a feature he found worked continuously in his favor – and he was able to plug the device into an outlet and subsequently present Whitney with hot food.

Of course, the time it had taken him to do this had been considerable, and had put him off his routine. Not that it much mattered. Jason was only set in his rhythm because it was natural to do so, and was accustomed enough to the odd interruption by way of someone walking where they shouldn't to be unbothered. Besides, witnessing her reaction had been worth the effort and the delay.

He had never seen anyone eat so fast. She had taken one look at the coils of steam rising from the bowl and set upon it like a starving fox. Only, starving animals never really looked happy when they ate so much as satisfied. When _he_ ate – on the increasingly rarer occasion that he did eat – he never really felt much of anything beyond the relief of meeting a need. _She_ had been happy. He had seen it all over her face, in the way she cradled the bowl against her chest, close to her face and mouth, the way her eyes had brightened and her lips had curled in tiny half-smiles around the spoon. It had been a strange, and strangely fascinating, thing to observe.

Clearly she had been right, canned things were meant to be eaten hot. Interesting. Maybe he would try that the next time he felt hungry, just to see what it was like.

After he'd escorted her to the bathroom and back, he'd set off on his rounds like normal. He had been resetting a snare – tripped but empty, probably by some other variety of animal – reaching into a pocket for the twine he usually kept there when his fingers met the rectangular paper object.

He'd completely forgotten. Distracted, it seemed, by the food revelation, or perhaps after.

He couldn't say why, after all she'd been perfectly compliant. But when he had begun the walk back from the bathroom, when the chain had pulled tight at her wrists and she had not moved – had simply stood perched on the edge of the step and regarded him – he'd had the creeping impression that she was about to run again.

She hadn't, of course, though she had walked more slowly than usual, probably due to being cooped up so long in the tunnels. He needed to make sure to take her outside more often. Surely he could restructure his rounds to do so? And the distraction of the book…

The book that was still in his pocket.

Reaching past the paperback he grasped the twine and cut off a length to tie the snare loosely back into position, before rising and heading back for the house.

He could have waited, he supposed, until he had completely the trek, seen to everything else. It wasn't as if there wasn't time. Yet the odd, niggling sense of guilt had come back to bite him like an insect; small, inconsequential, but persistently distracting.

Jason had just stepped through the moldering threshold of what had once been the front door when he heard the crash.

It had sounded a bit like breaking glass, but not quite so sharp or with quite the clarity of glass. Whatever it was, it had most certainly come from below.

He started swiftly forward, not bothering to wait for any following noises before tossing back the trapdoor and descending. He could hear something else now, above the muted, conversational squeaking of the rats, amplified by the close space of the tunnels and the way they funneled sound. A thin metallic click and scrape, repeated at no apparent rhythm.

Rounding the corner, he found the lantern he'd left in a broken shambles, plastic shards spilling like ice crystals over the crate cracked open like a clam shell to reveal its insides. The light was gone, the battery pack burst and crumpled, the bulb cold. But there was enough streaming down from what was left of the sunset to make out the sliver of metal gripped between her fingers.

She was bent over her hands, intently focused on sticking the end of the wire into the lock on one of her cuffs and wiggling it around as if to imitate the motions of a key. He could tell it wouldn't work simply by looking. The way the lock was constructed, it would likely have required at least two pieces like the one she had to do what he suspected she was attempting, and definitely two hands, neither of which she had. He could also tell, especially by the way the sliver slid against the metal cuff as it jerked accidentally free, that she was in danger of impaling herself with the thing. Not likely something which would result in serious injury, but any injury was something he would prefer to avoid.

He didn't think to make noise upon his approach, yet something – if only the indescribable animal sense of danger – alerted her. Her head snapped up, pupils blown wide in the dark. They found him just as he reached her, one hand closing around hers. So much smaller, so incredibly delicate.

The instant he laid a hand on her she began to thrash, yanking her arms back and closing her fingers tight around the little piece of wire as though it had the power to save her – which evidently she had hoped it might.

Her spine arced, her head rearing back like that of an angry weasel threatening to bite. Most animals would bear their teeth as a sign of aggression, whether to express dominance or a threat: a reminder that said teeth could – and would – clamp down and tear flesh, shatter bone, open throats. More often than not such a gesture was born out of fear, as this one unquestionably was.

He almost admired the planning. She must have been holding onto the idea for a while. But she had played the part of having given up, had waited nearly two hours so that he would be well out of earshot, so she would be long gone by the time he came back and realized she wasn't where he'd left her. She might have made it had it not been due to the little misfortunes of the lack of tools and of leverage. And his having chosen to return at precisely the worst moment.

It was a determination to survive the likes of which he had rarely seen. He didn't respect people, but he respected that.

Again she thrashed, the back of her coming dangerously close to cracking against the rock behind her. A cold spark of worry ignited in his mind at the thought, and he laid his other hand flat against her chest, directly over the frantic flutter of her heartbeat. Gently he pressed, back, back, until her shoulder blades met the wall. She kicked out at him instead, landing a solid blow to his thigh with her heel. It would have been a brutal and painful hit were he not so seemingly immune to harm.

That was another thing he didn't understand, among the many. Before he'd died he had been just like any other person. He had bled and bruised easily, scraped knees and stubbed toes had hurt. He had often cried over such little hurts. Now, though, any pain he felt was fleeting, and any injury he took healed so fast that he could hardly trace how bad the wounds had been by the time he could examine them. He didn't think he was invulnerable, after all he still bled. But it seemed to take far more damage than most humans were capable of administering to cause him real hurt.

Unlike her. He was all too capable of hurting her far beyond the point of healing. Which was why he exercised caution when wresting the bit of wire from her, careful not to grip too hard or twist too far in doing so. He tucked it away into a pocket, then jerked his hand back out to catch the fists she hurled at him in recompense. Her eyes squeezed tightly shut, her mouth falling open to release a scream that couldn't possibly not be shredding her vocal chords. All rage and frustration.

Jason winced at the sound grating at his eardrums. She might not be all that strong but she was _loud_ , and it hurt. Yet he felt no inclination to silence her. This wasn't an attempt to call for help, nor any deliberate effort to distract him. She hadn't fought him this hard before, as if she didn't care whether she killed herself in the effort. It was reckless, _desperate_.

Somehow he knew that in her mind it was her last chance to gain her freedom. Regardless as to whether it would have succeeded or not, she had tied her hope into the effort, and he had just walked in and destroyed it.

He could allow her the outlet of her screams.

Gradually her struggles slowed. Exhaustion was in every line of her face as though etched there, heavy and dark, and again he felt a twinge of guilt streak through him, there and gone like a rabbit darting across his path.

"Please…" she whispered, and he felt his spine stiffen.

He didn't like the word _please_. It was inexorably linked to people as he ran them down, pleading for their lives, and so often paired alongside attempts to bargain or threaten. Neither came from her, but still the word caused a sour distaste to rise at the back of his throat.

"Please, just kill me."

His eyes widened, caught utterly off guard.

No one had ever…asked him to kill them before. Was it some new attempt at distraction? Some form of trickery?

Her eyes lifted to meet his one, over-bright and liquid, filled with tears she clearly refused to let fall. Only the faint tremble of her chin belied how close she was to giving over and crying.

No, he didn't think this was trickery.

When he did nothing, she turned her face away. She shook off his hands – rather, he allowed her to – and wedged herself into the corner, folding her limbs inward. Curling up into a tight ball. He heard the sobs then, for all her effort to muffle them; heavy, convulsive ones from soul-deep places. And he knew those sobs. Knew them as dearly as a childhood friend, familiar, if partly forgotten.

The memory was clear and vivid as if he saw it in a mirror. His six-year-old self, burrowed under a pile of blankets on his bed and crying so hard he had expected it would break him apart. He had been playing outside by himself, as he usually did, when a pair of other children had happened upon him. He had hoped for playmates, until they began throwing rocks.

It had been the day he learned that the unbiased tolerance of children did not last. He had cried for hours.

He crouched there awkwardly, watching Whitney's shoulders heave with her sobs, at a loss as to what to do. Should he…comfort her? How would he do that? Would she even want him to? Doubtful, as it was because of him she was down here, trapped and bound against her will. No, he should go. Leave her to herself.

Quietly he gathered the remnants of the smashed lantern. It had been truly decimated beyond repair, and he rather marveled at the conviction she would have had to do it. He wouldn't be able to give her another. He didn't necessarily think she would try this particular stunt again, but he couldn't be sure and didn't want to risk it. Neither did he particularly relish the thought of leaving her in the dark.

After a moment of consideration he relocated the second lantern from where he'd left it at the workbench, hooking it to one of the beams above and well out of reach even if she stood. Finally, he extracted the little book from the pocket.

For the space of a breath he simply held it in both hands, smoothing the winkled covers before setting it carefully in the center of the crate where she was sure to find it later. His fingertips grazed the pages as he stood, and he felt an uneasy lurch somewhere below his chest. Anxious…he was _anxious._

He didn't understand it. Why would he be anxious about leaving the book? He racked his brain, trying to puzzle out the source of the out-of-place emotion, and came up blank.

On silent feet he left her, following the familiar path up and out into the house, gathering pliers and several metal pins as he went.

He would stay close for a little while, just to be safe. The rest of his rounds could wait for now. The wire he had strung to alert him to anyone drawing too close to the south side of the house needed resetting. A family of rabbits had moved in somewhere nearby and had set it off. Chances were he'd have to move it. Maybe by the time he'd finished that Whitney would be calm enough to eat again and he would have gotten over the odd nervousness he still felt lodged below his sternum.

* * *

 **NOTES:**

Hey all! Apologies for the delay, I had inadvertently written my brain into a corner and couldn't figure out how to navigate my way around it for a bit there. Unfortunately due to the holidays, the next one might be a bit of a wait too. I appreciate your patience!

I know these first couple chapters feel repetitive, which is by design. It feels natural to me that interaction at this point would be limited and somewhat stunted, on both sides. We are going places...but that slow burn tag is there for a reason. Rest assured, good stuff is coming!

Have a lovely holiday, whatever/whenever you celebrate, and I'll see you next time!


	5. Bad Blood

**CHAPTER 5  
** Bad Blood

~/13/~

A tear fell from Whitney's cheek onto the back of her hand with a plop, forming a tiny puddle. She lifted it, watching the droplet run down her wrist in a fine, glimmering trail.

When she'd been a little girl her mom had told her that tears were precious things; that if she were to somehow catch one, bury it deep in the earth for a hundred years, it would become a diamond. Whitney remembered once having tried just that, going so far as to dig as deep a hole as she could out in the backyard (all of two feet) in preparation so that the next time she cried, she would be ready. She couldn't recall if she had ever actually succeeded in burying one, or if the hole had simply been filled in by time or by a new plant.

After Ellen had gotten sick she still worked in the yard, even when she could no longer teach. With help from Fatima – the live-in nurse who came every day to help with mom's care, to administer medication, and the like – Whitney had been able to settle her outside in good weather so she could spend a few hours picking weeds out of the vegetable beds while Whitney sat nearby and studied. Until she had been too sick even to do that much.

By the time the doctors found the cancer, it had metastasized. It was in her lungs, her pancreas, her bones, and no amount of treatment would do anything more than put off the inevitable in exchange for more pain and illness. She'd chosen to forego the chemo and radiation in favor of enjoying the rest of her life – the two years at absolute best. Clay had left, angry and afraid; a choice he would likely regret one day. Whitney had stayed, and thrown herself into the adulthood still so new to her. Ellen had reached year three before the weakness started to show. Another five months before she was all but bedridden. Whitney wasn't sure if she'd make it to her fourth year.

It had been Mom's encouragement that convinced her to go on the trip with Mike. She had been reluctant, which was putting it delicately, until Ellen had taken her hand in one of her own – so quickly withered when just weeks ago it had been full and strong – and instructed her to go.

 _"You can't spend your life in here waiting for me to die, Whitsie-bat. Go. Have a good time. I'll still be here when you get back."_

Reluctant or not, in the moment Whitney had believed her. It would only be a weekend, three days maximum. The prognosis wasn't good and time was running out, but she hadn't had the heart to say no. Not to mom. Not to the mom who had raised her on magic and dreams, fed her on imagination as much as practicality. Not to the mom who was still smiling through the pain as though it didn't hurt at all. As though they had all the time in the world.

She blinked puffy eyes, sore and sensitive from so much crying, and finally registered the yellow halo of light which fell over her from above. Another lantern hung there from the beams – or, she assumed it was a different one, since she had smashed the literal hell out of the other. She had been sure he would deny her a light after that. She wouldn't even have blamed him for doing so, since she had proven untrustworthy in the extreme. One more thing she had expected and met with something else entirely. Rather like the expectation that he would be gone for hours longer than he had been.

Her plan had not included a contingency for if he came back early. Granted, she had been fairly positive picking the locks on the handcuffs wasn't going to work without another bit of something – wood or plastic or more metal – but she had been set on trying until either the wire gave or her fingers did. Not that she'd had the chance. Jason had plucked it from her as though snatching something dangerous from the hand of an infant, even as she'd fought and kicked and screeched her throat raw. He'd simply held her there – one hand lying flat against her sternum from collarbone to collarbone – and she'd known it was only to keep her from hurting herself, but the restraint had chafed like sandpaper and all she had been able to think was how badly she wanted her mother.

Overwhelmed as she had been in the moment by grief and homesickness and little girl fear she had pleaded for him to kill her. To end it. And she was so indescribably glad that he hadn't. As much as she kept circling back to how much easier it might be, she couldn't die yet. She couldn't die _here._

 _I'll be here when you get back. I promise._

She supposed she should sleep, but even after she settled properly on her striped mattress and closed her eyes she couldn't seem to nod off. Her mind kept seizing thoughts and darting off with them in a thousand different directions. Thoughts about Mom and Clay, about Mike. About Jason. She tried going over the last test she had taken before the trip, hoping to bore herself to unconsciousness by mentally labeling the venous system. Of the expansive universe of anatomy and physiology she loathed cardiovascular with the devotion one might have shown a spouse of fifty years. Not even after taking four separate anatomy classes – or three and a half, really – of varying intensity it only seemed to get hazier while everything else grew ever clearer. The attempt at counting proverbial medical sheep only succeeded in making her cranky.

It seemed like only minutes before the shadows began to soften as light filtered into the cavern and Whitney sat up with a groan of resignation. Come noon she was going to be a zombie and her sleep schedule was going to take weeks to regulate when she got home. _If_ she ever got home. Because, even without an early death, she might not.

Sitting up, she rubbed at the tear stains at her cheeks with the heel of a hand, sniffling faintly. The debris from the smashed lantern was gone. She didn't remember him clearing it away, but he must have simply been too quiet to hear over the noise of her own sobs. There was, however, something else. Sitting in the very center of the crate was a paperback book.

Of all the things she might have expected to see, that was not one of them. Yet there it sat, clear as day and wrinkled as thoroughly as though it had spent the majority of its life being buffeted around in a bag full of rocks.

Intrigued in spite of herself she picked up the little novel, skimmed the cover, and promptly wrinkling her nose.

There had been a time in her life when Whitney had been certain there wasn't a book on earth she didn't like. Of course, that had been before middle and high school when reading for school became much more prevalent and therefore much more of a chore, and she had discovered very quickly that she had been, in fact, mistaken. While Wuthering Heights was not first on the list of books she considered hot garbage, it was definitely up there by virtue of the sheer un-likability of both its primary protagonists. Having the faint relief-founded joy at the prospect of a book sink rapidly into disgust sent her into an odd kind of vertigo, and she found herself wondering whether Jason actually _had_ killed her that first night and she was currently in some kind of hell. The thought might have been morbidly soothing, but she knew it was false.

The appearance of the book threw her more than anything else had. It wasn't a necessity meeting a need in the efforts to maintain her physical equilibrium. Food was nourishment and basic in the extreme. A book was neither basic nor a necessity. It was…occupation, distraction, something else to focus on besides the situation and she couldn't fathom the reason.

Outside of the hunt – the pattern and context of vengeance – he didn't seem to know what to do with her. Though she was starting to believe that he truly didn't intend to kill her. That should, she supposed, have been a relief, but all it did was force her to face the reality that she was a captive with no end to her captivity in sight. It was starting to make her claustrophobic, her skin too tight for her body in the unpleasant way of restless anxiety. The smells were becoming pervasive, smoke and gasoline and dirt pressing in on her until they cloyed and choked like a gag. Yet he seemed, in his way, to be aware of this, whether he had simply guessed or whether she was projecting anxiety like a beacon. Why else give her the book? Unless it was simply to serve as an occupation for her brain to keep it off the subject of plotting escape...

Well, fair enough.

The book's spine crackled when she opened it to the first page, groaning in that way particular to old paper, and skimmed.

 _"This is certainly a beautiful country! In all England, I do not believe that I could have fixed on a situation so completely removed from the stir of society. A perfect misanthropist's heaven: and Mr Heathcliff and I…"_

Ugh.

Whitney slapped the covers gently shut and set the novel back on the crate.

It wasn't that she didn't appreciate the gesture of the book, because she did. It was just that Cathy and Heathcliff were the most toxic portrayal of romance in classical literature treated as a wistful goal and not a cautionary tale, second only to Romeo and Juliet. She had never been able to understand how so many of the girls in her classes could swoon and sigh over a relationship so underlined in abuse. Suffice it to say she was going to have to be a fair bit more desperate to subject herself to it again.

Her stomach gurgled mournfully and she reached for what remained of the crackers. Breaking them into chunks to savor slowly, she chewed and hoped they would be enough to tide her over until Jason came with her morning rations.

As if on cue, the trapdoor opened with a quiet _screek_ of old wood and Whitney half choked on a laugh, wryly amused by tidy, twisted little routine they'd developed.

He brought her a second can in addition to the bowl this morning, which incited an automatic curiosity at something new, much like the book had. The reason as to why was clear when he set them in front of her. The soup was broth-based – hot and gently steaming – with bits of barley and celery and not much else, which explained why he'd felt the need to bring another in case the first proved insufficient. Or perhaps simply because he felt she wasn't eating enough as it was. She wasn't sure how he'd determined that the can of fruit cocktail was an exception to her insistence that canned things should be heated, but she was glad. The prospect of fruit, even in a form she would normally have turned her nose up to as a child, made her close to giddy.

"Thank you."

She wanted to bite her tongue in half. What the actual fuck was she doing, thanking the man who had fucking _kidnapped her_ as though he were doing something kind or generous? The words had simply tumbled out of her mouth as if pulled by a string attached directly to the spoon she now cradled in one hand. If he wanted to be _kind_ he'd let her go.

Out of the corner of her eye she saw him still, his empty hand twitching as though he had been going to reach for the blade at his side before checking the motion. He must have assumed she were trying deliberately to catch him off guard. All of a sudden her flare of righteous anger faded into something incredibly sad. She supposed that if all the interactions he had had with people for the past however many years had been based solely in killing them, it might be jarring to hear something other than a plea or empty bribe. She didn't think the words themselves were alien to him, simply things he hadn't heard perhaps since his mother died. Everything else about the circumstances aside, feeding her _was_ a kindness of a sort in that he had no obligation. Yet her attempt to recognize it – the reflexive nature notwithstanding – could only be seen as potential trickery. She didn't blame him, but that didn't make it any less sad.

Well. She wasn't going to take it back, and she wasn't going to apologize for it. She had done her share of pleading and crying and screeching, but she was not an animal in a trap; she was capable of more than simply baring her teeth and threatening to bite. She was a person, damn it...and so was he.

Whitney met the single steely eye that watched her with the caution he might have shown a rattlesnake, and felt the thought reaffirm itself in her mind. He was a person. A very large, very silent, very scary person – but a _person_. A person who had not hurt her as he could have. And maybe it was twisted after all he must have done – all she had _seen_ him do – but she couldn't help thinking that if only someone had simply treated him like one, maybe things would have been different. Perhaps he had simply never let anyone else live long enough to try.

He continued to eye her for a moment as she ate, warily cautious. Yet he seemed to come to the decision that she wasn't actually intending to do something inadvisable since he stood and moved to the back of the cavern.

She watched him, quietly slurping her broth, while he gathered things like twine and small bits of metal and sorted them into pockets. Briefly he disappeared, not back into the usual tunnel to the left but off to the right through what she thought might have been a door. By the time he returned she'd all but devoured the rest of her fruit and was wishing she had more crackers.

When he made to undo her chain for their routine trip to the bathrooms, she held up a hand to stop him.

"It's ok, I don't have to…I haven't drunk any water since last night."

His eye narrowed, suggesting as much concern as disapproval, and she found herself impressed by how expressive he could be with just that single feature. She hadn't realized how heavily she relied on facial expression until she couldn't see to use it. With Jason she didn't have the easy luxury, but he didn't seem to have any difficulty projecting when he wanted to.

Lowering into a crouch and reaching for the nearest jug Jason tapped the side with two fingers. The same gesture he had used before to quite clear effect.

 _Drink._

"I know," she said, reaching automatically for the water, "I'll be better, I promise—"

Whitney did bite her tongue then. She could be cooperative. She could be polite. But promising something, even something so simple (and biologically necessary) as drinking more water, was an entirely different thing. Still, she unscrewed the cap and swallowed obediently while he looked on like a particularly menacing mother hen.

The tinny noise of bells broke the quiet and they both looked up to watch a dull brass row of them strung along a nearby beam rattle once, then twice.

"What is that?"

It had been an automatic question, and one to which she didn't expect an answer since talking to him was more like talking to a gargoyle than a man. Yet Jason straightened and lifted a hand. Tucking his thumb and outermost fingers into his palm he touched the tips of the index and middle to the surface of the crate, walking them along the edge as if miming the motion of legs. Whitney was so shocked by the obvious effort to communicate that at first she couldn't focus on what it was he was trying to say.

"People?" she guessed, and was met with a small nod. "How…?"

For a moment he simply stared at her, his head tilting ever so slightly to one side as if in puzzled bemusement. She was convinced he wouldn't answer, especially when he stood and walked away. That was, until he stopped at the workbench and picked up a ball of twine. Bending, he tied one end to the leg of the table. Then he strung it along the base of the threshold leading up into the shallow stairwell four inches or so from the floor and pulled it taut. Using one finger, he plucked the twine so that it shuddered, vibrating like the string of a violin.

Clearly she was meant to understand, but all she could do was stare blankly. Seeming to see her confusion he repeated the walking gesture mid-air, then plucked the twine a second time.

And then it hit her.

"A tripwire?"

He nodded slightly – that single, shallow incline of his head – then pointed up at the line of bells.

"…connected to the bells?"

Another nod.

Well, damn.

"You rigged that yourself?"

He gathered up the twine, setting the ball back on the table as he nodded – and of course he had. The miners certainly wouldn't have had use for a system like that. He seemed nonchalant about the whole thing, but she was impressed. The tools that she had seen down here were mostly rusted over or caked with grime. She would bet that he had planned, engineered, and crafted the mechanics of the thing by hand.

She craned her head back to peer up at the line of bells that had just clanged; a different set than the ones she had heard and seen ringing earlier. Each grouping must be rigged to a different wire, probably so that he could determine where the people were depending on which bells rang. He must have lines like that one strung all over the place, around the house, the lake, the surrounding grounds. They must have set one off that day, or that night. She didn't remember stepping into a wire or cord or anything, but there had been four other people and any one of them could have done.

Jason had resumed gathering supplies, this time tucking a knife with a blade that must have been as long as her forearm into his belt opposite the machete which he extracted from its holster in order to test the edge with the pad of a thumb. Readying to head off on the hunt wherever the bells had indicated.

"Did we…" She hesitated. Maybe it wasn't the best idea to bring it up. Maybe she didn't really want to know. "Did we set this off?"

Sliding the machete back into its holster, Jason shook his head. Lifting a hand, he tapped the sack over the place where his right ear would be.

"You heard us."

It hadn't been a question – his gesture had been clear enough – but he still answered with a nod. They had been loud, then. Well…that was marginally better than running into a trap. But not by a lot.

It struck her suddenly that they had just held an entire conversation. A totally menial, normal conversation, minus the circumstances and his usual silence. What was stranger than the oddity of such a thing, was how easy it had been. At no point had she thought his attempts to answer strange until this very second, as she considered how very much he _didn't_ have to do so. And how much she hadn't had to carry on with clarifying questions. She wasn't sure what that meant, and was fairly sure he didn't, either. Up until now neither of them had seemed inclined toward much more than the most basic forms of interaction. Maybe they had each decided, in their own ways, to make the best of the situation.

He pointed to the jug on the crate in a final command for her to hydrate before slipping silently into the tunnel.

~/~

Jason was at a something of a loss. In fact, he was starting to think that being at a loss was going to be a constant when dealing with the girl called Whitney.

 _Thank you,_ she had said, when all he'd done was bring her food amid a hailstorm of cruelties. He had dragged her underground and chained her to a wall, bruised her, denied her light and air and freedom. Yet she had thanked him. For the food, yes, maybe even the book. But she had still done it. And as if that hadn't been strange enough, she had gone on to ask him questions about the bells.

He kept hearing her voice in his head, low and a little hoarse from all the screaming, but soft. The way she had talked to him like no one had since before. Just talked, as if he were someone completely other than who he was. He wasn't sure what had made him answer, nor go so far as to recreate the basic mechanics of a wire in explanation when he owed her none. In the moment he hadn't questioned the impulse to do so, but now… He didn't know if it had been out of some need to keep her calm and appeased, or whether she had simply caught him off guard. Or, more unsettling still, whether she had managed to tap into some part of him he had thought long since washed away by lake water and mud. He had assumed all traces of that boy who longed for something to ease the loneliness were dead, yet he had seized upon the questions and clutched them like he might have his stuffed bear. Automatically? Instinctively?

Still, conversing with her – if what they had done could be termed in such a way – had not been unpleasant. She had been engaged, curious, and had followed his pantomimed responses far more efficiently than he might have assumed.

He recalled the way her eyes had widened upon his explanation of his signal system, with surprise and…something else. Something that wasn't fear, but rounded the pupils in a similar way, the warmth of her irises sparking. From farther away they seemed simply a warm brown, but when he got closer he could see the green, threads of it radiating out from the pupils amid flecks of gold.

He stopped short. Why was he thinking about her eyes?

The frown pulled at the corners of his mouth and between his brows. He was not accustomed to being anything other than in complete control of his thoughts, but just now he did not feel controlled. He felt...odd, unsettled. His mind seemed to be pulling itself in directions he had not chosen and had not approved of its own volition. Something he couldn't ever remember happening before.

With a quiet huff of breath, he redirected his focus to the task at hand: hunting down whatever had triggered the alarm.

The alarm in question belonged to a wire strung along the border at the southernmost edge of his territory. Not too near the house, but far closer than he would have liked. Often enough the causes of such an alarm were animals. But animals didn't tend to reexamine a strange thing over which they had stumbled. Bells that rang more than once were all the indication he needed to know his prey was human. Considering this particular wire bordered the land belonging to his closest neighbor he was more than certain whoever had triggered it was likely one of the many people he so often saw working there.

Jason heard the boy before seeing him. Most people were loud. They neither noted nor cared about where they tread or what they destroyed, how many animals they frightened. But this particular person was especially noisy, tromping through the undergrowth as though with the intent to make as much sound as possible, and providing a perfect beacon as to his location. One that someone with hearing far less keen than Jason's own would have been able to trace.

From the shelter of the trees Jason followed the boy's path through the thinning trees. He was whistling: shrill, unpleasant chirps compounding atop the rustle and crunch of his footsteps, a bag slung over one shoulder. Judging by their proximity to the tripped wire, Jason calculated that he must have come from somewhere not far from the place Whitney and her friends had chosen to camp. If that was the case, then the boy had come much closer to the house than Jason's comfort allowed, especially now that there was something there to protect beyond the memory of his mother. The boy had more than overstepped his bounds, and the tithe must be paid.

When he came to the invisible line in the earth Jason didn't pause before crossing. He followed the boy to the edge of the woods where the line of trees cut sharply into the clearing within which the barn stood, watching as he disappeared into the old building, and calculating. He had been in this barn a number of times before – most often to siphon from the kerosene that was stored there. When he had done so, however, it was after dark when there was no one around to witness his comings and goings. He supposed he could rush in, try to catch the boy unawares. But he couldn't know exactly where the boy was within the not unexpansive interior, which did not necessarily lead to a quick kill. Nor could he be sure that there wasn't someone else within earshot if there happened to be a struggle.

Pacing the clearing's edge from the shadows, Jason took stock of the space surrounding the barn. There were several new bales of hay sitting outside due to be carried in, and the truck – frosted with a layer of rust – was parked adjacent to the door. Both potential sources of cover. Both less than ideal. A flicker of light caught his eye from the gap between the open doors, a tiny lick of flame to betray the boy's position at ground level. He rounded the clearing to the rear of the barn. There was a tree there with a low-hanging limb solid enough to hold his weight. He lifted a hand to the gnarled bark, hoisting himself up and bracing a foot against the trunk. With a single twisting push, he leaped from tree to siding, pulling himself up into the hayloft from the wide sliding door. He landed quietly, knees bending to distribute the noise of his weight.

While the barn was kept in a state of cluttered disarray throughout, the upper story was especially messy, littered with odds and ends that ranged from functional machinery to the utterly bizarre. Jason found himself somewhat dubious as to whether there was any space that could be allotted to the hay waiting outside.

Straightening, he maneuvered around a rather precarious stack of boxes, heading for the stairs, when the floor beneath him groaned as though wounded.

Jason stilled, startled. He had been in this loft more times than he could count. He knew every weak spot in the wood, every board that creaked or shifted, including the one upon which he had just put his foot. He exhaled, a sharp gust of annoyance. He was off, clumsy, walking into noises like a newborn. Because of her.

 _Stop thinking of her._

Sternly he pushed the thought from his mind. He could hear a scuffing tread on the wood of the steps coming up to investigate the source of the noise, and moved quickly back, concealing himself amidst the detritus.

Holding what appeared to be a sledgehammer ready in one hand the boy entered the loft at a nervous slink, reeking of stale beer and – strangely enough – of skunk. Jason wrinkled his nose, wishing for the moment that his sense of smell weren't quite so strong. Still, the distasteful odor only fueled his drive to have over and done with the matter and he eased from his hiding place, moving slowly, pointedly picking his steps to avoid yet more loose and creaky boards.

The boy had just finished stalking what appeared to be an oddly-proportioned imitation of a human, tearing away the sheeting which had covered it with a snapping flail and a brandish of the hammer before visibly relaxing. As though he had anticipated some manner of threat from the thing. He had just lowered the hammer, suspicion apparently – foolishly – appeased, and had laid his empty hand against the statue. Jason could tell the thing was supposed to be a woman, though it was shaped like no living woman Jason had even seen, and the boy was running his hand down the molded plastic in a way much like he had seen other young men do to girls. But there was something about the boy's touch...some indescribable nuance he had no context within which to define, and no reason to justify, which Jason found himself disliking. _Intensely._

He wasn't sure what gave him away – some small reflection or shift in the air, or by some fluke of nature the boy was far more attuned to his surroundings than Jason had expected. The boy whipped around, swinging the hammer with a hollow shout. Jason deflected with a forearm, shoulder flexing as he absorbed the impact of the blow and wood splintered, clattering to the floor. Jason's other hand snaked out to seize the boy by the neck of his shirt, hauling him backward into the statue with rather less effect than he wanted.

Distracted, unfocused. Sloppy. What was _wrong_ with him?

The boy flailed and struck out as he struggled, somehow managing to land a hit to Jason's face. The blow glanced off his cheekbone, with only a single dull, painless throb to tell contact had been made. The hollow rip which followed did far more damage.

Air met Jason's skin as the cloth of his mask tore away, falling to the floor between their feet.

The pause was instinctual. He froze, blinking rapidly to adjust his weaker eye to the light as the shirt slipped from between his fingers, and regained focus just in time to see the boy's face twist and crumple with disgust.

" _What_ the—!" The boy took a staggering half-step away. "That shit ain't fuckin' right, dude."

Anger sparked, stone striking flint and catching in Jason's blood, and for the length of a second he could neither see nor think. With a single fluid motion he unsheathed the blade at his side and slit the boy's throat with enough force that it yawned wide – severed almost completely to the spine. The boy's pale eyes widened, almost with surprise rather than fear as the blood flowed down his neck in a sleek crimson rush. Then he dropped, a heavy, empty vessel of a life now drained. Jason looked down on the motionless form and felt...nothing. The rage was gone. It had left him like a fever breaking, fire ebbing to cold ash.

He wasn't sure why the insult had rankled. It had been a long time since anyone had seen his face…but he had not forgotten the way the sight of it could warp fear to take on an all too different tone. After so many years he still wasn't free of the memories. It didn't happen as often now, but sometimes they would rise up like bile inside his mind, sly and creeping, until his head was full of taunting from childhood, beatings long-since healed over. Sometimes he still felt the hands pulling at his clothes, prodding at his skull, his face, shoving at his back and chest and shoulders. He had been small at the time, and easy to overpower. He sometimes wondered whether the size he had achieved wasn't the most blatant sign of his no longer being entirely human, as if the determination to be other than what he was had fueled his growth, crafted him with strength and size to fulfil his self-made mandate.

Still, he was not the boy he had been – small and scared and helpless – and concealing his face helped him to remember it. People could no longer hurt him, not truly. Their disgust no longer had the power to shame him; nor did their scorn, their words, or their laughter. He was no longer the one at the mercy of the whims of others. In the end, people were flesh and they were blood and they were bone. Bone could be splintered. Flesh could be severed, cut, or burned, be returned to so much meat. In the end, they were nothing at all.

Kneeling, he fingered the remnants of his mask. He had hoped it might merely be a little torn, but the length of cloth was shredded. He had spent so long wrapping and tying it painstakingly about his head just so. Yet as he stared down at it, mourning the small loss, he knew it was beyond repair. He would have to go without.

It was in that moment, clutching the tattered scrap, he realized with a sharp, uncomfortable start that he was been wrong. The disgust of people could not hurt him...unless it came from her.

He knew what he looked like, just as he knew better than to pretend that she would react with anything less than horror simply because she had talked to him so casually. He didn't mind that so much, it was reality – his reality. Yet he understood in that moment that by some chance, perhaps one that he himself had set into place in having spared her to begin with, she had the power to make him feel shame.

As soon as it came the thought bothered him. There was no reason that he should feel any differently about showing his face to one human versus another. He could allow himself some discomfort, as he had no great love for the root of almost all his suffering and it seemed logical to want to separate himself from any reminder of that. But to actively cringe from the idea of one person seeing him? To... _fear_ it? And yes, it was fear he felt, fine and fragile and thready in his pulse. There was no logic in it. None. She was no threat to him. She was slender and brittle, weak from the stress of her captivity, from hunger and lack of sleep. He could snap her in half as easily as drawing breath. He had no more reason to fear her than he had the boy lying dead on the floor. But he did. He did, and he could not identify the reason why.

The solution, again, was simple. All he had to do was go back down into the warren of tunnels, put his hand around her neck, and twist. It would be quick, clean, as painless as he could make it. He could find a way to do it without her seeing him so she wouldn't know, wouldn't have time to feel anything more than surprise.

But the violence with which his mind rejected the idea was dizzying. No sooner had he run through the possibility then he was recoiling from it, shutting it down as firmly as if he were tearing it from existence. No. He could not kill her. Not now. He had forfeited his right to do so the instant he'd chosen to let her live. Her life was no longer his to take regardless of whatever childhood ghosts she awoke in him. Even if it had been he was not entirely confident that he could have done it. Which was a whole other problem in of itself.

His hand curled into a fist about the mangled fabric, knuckles creaking softly. He felt his jaw tighten, tension coiling up along the muscle lining his arm and shoulder all the way through his back.

Oh no, he was very much _not_ in control.

Lifting his eyes he scanned the space around him in the hopes of an idea; something, anything he could use. He could not go back with his face unveiled. He just...he couldn't.

Something smooth and off-white peeked out at him from behind a tarp, catching his eye. Letting the shroud slip from his fingers, he reached for it, unveiling the oval shape of a face that was not a face. It was chipped and stained, but whole, and judging by the hard, unyielding texture far more resilient than cloth. There were leather straps attached and upon seeing them he surmised the thing's purpose with nothing less than elation. Rising, he slipped it over his face, the plastic surface cool and far less smothering than the sackcloth. The relief which followed was almost tangible, something he could taste or smell as the mask fit to his face as though it had been made just for him. It was such a little thing, yet it felt like armor being lowered to protect far more than just his face.

Jason turned his attention to the corpse, lying now in a shallow puddle of blood. He could leave it, he supposed. Of all his neighbors, Garrick was the least likely to raise a fuss and send any police into Jason's land to investigate, yet somehow this made Jason less inclined to leave a mess for the old farmer. So he wrapped the still warm body in the tarp, using twine from the ball in his pocket to secure it in place and hauling it over a shoulder.

On the way out, he used the front door.

Whitney was asleep when he descended back down into the tunnel, or so he'd thought. She must have heard him, or heard the rustle of the tarp as he maneuvered the body of the boy through the narrow end of the passage, for he had barely made it all the way into the cavern before she was sitting up, blinking sleepily and glancing around at him. A second later she jumped, slapping a hand to her chest with a rattle of chain, her eyes flaring wide in the dark.

" _Jesus—!_ " she wheezed, as breathy as if she had just run a great distance and somewhat exasperated. Clearly he had startled her, or the mask had. "I thought you were..."

He could tell the instant she realized what it was he carried. Everything about her changed. Tension sang in every line of body, muscles going tight as a bowstring. Her expression tightened around her eyes. The blood left her already pale face, leaving her paper white and drawn. He could feel her body heat spike from all the way across the chamber, hear the stress surging through her veins like an electrical current. Even her scent altered. The bitter tang of fear interjecting the soft floral-and-musk smells of her skin and hair.

She drew back, pressing against the grating so tightly he heard the muted clang of her shoulder blades meeting the metal. It was as if the repeated contact, the strange routine he had set for them, had softened the prey drive he had noticed – so much higher than that of so many others. Softened, but not forgotten.

Good. She _should_ fear him. And _he_ should be glad of it.

Adjusting the weight of the boy's body he turned from her. He strode through the main room behind the workbench and into the passage beyond, pretending he didn't feel her gaze like an arrow piercing between his shoulder blades. He didn't care how she looked at him – with any amount of fear or horror or disgust – so long as it was tied to what he did and what he was and not to his mangled face.

Or so he firmly told himself.

~/~

Fear trickled from Whitney's brain to the pit of her stomach like sand in an hourglass. She watched as the dark swallowed him, burden and all, vanishing into the passage off to the right, forcing herself to breathe. Her stomach had dropped so hard and fast that she had felt almost faint. She had actually felt the color drain from her cheeks, retreating deeper into her body as though frightened. Not that she blamed it.

There was a long, shallow scraping noise followed by a bang – the opening and closing of a door, perhaps. And then nothing. No footsteps, no rustle of tarp. Nothing but the shallow gasp of her own breath and the thunder of her pulse in her ears.

She hadn't thought anything of the thing he carried. Not at first. It had looked heavy: not because he bore it with any hint as to it being so, but when she ran it through her head, chances were high it was not something a normal man would be able to carry with near the amount of ease. At first glance it had simply appeared to be an overlarge bag of some kind, until he shifted to maneuver it through the narrow end of the tunnel…and she had seen the feet dangling from between the folds. The truth of what she was witnessing did not hit her immediately, almost as though her brain was attempting to protect her by refusing to identify it. A battle that was swiftly lost as her eyes continued to stare and began to see the flares and dips of shoulders, waist, legs, if crudely outlined in tarp and twine. By the time she had fully put it together, her body had already reacted and he had disappeared.

It struck her then that somewhere along the way she had misplaced her fear. She had not forgotten what he was…but it was as if his caring for her – basic and unquestionably odd – had dulled the edge of her mind, her perception. But she could not afford to forget, could not afford to allow herself to grow comfortable. The instant she did was the instant she lost any chance she had of getting away.

There was no doubt in her mind that the body he had just carried in from the woods belonged to whatever poor soul had triggered the bell alarm not an hour past. That didn't trouble her any more than had his killing before. No, what truly troubled her was the why of it. He had never brought a body down here before while she had been conscious and aware. What was different about this one?

More importantly…what was he _doing_ with it?

She wasn't given much by way of time to stew in her horrified wonderings, for not even a full minute passed before the door scraped and banged a second time and Jason moved back into her line of sight. The body was gone, replaced by a fresh gallon of water – which looked almost small in his hand. She tracked him as he crossed the space toward her. She was still fairly confident that he still intended her no harm – nevertheless, she was wary.

The mask he wore was the kind hockey players had once worn, made of molded, perforated fiberglass. It had once been white, but clearly had been lying about unused for a while as it had faded to an off-ivory shade. The red chevron designs at brow and cheeks were scraped and faded, the surface chipped. She wondered whether he'd lost the sackcloth, or whether he'd simply decided on a change. Maybe he had found it in his wanderings and felt it better suited his needs. Oddly enough, she found the mask far less frightening than the cloth. For one thing, it allowed her better sight of his eyes and therefore expression. For another, it made him seem more human. Which made what she had just seen that much worse. For if he seemed more of a man it made what he did all the more monstrous.

He lowered the jug to her crate, moving the near-empty one to the dirt floor and crouching silently before he reached for a wrist. She didn't flinch, but her skin did break into goose-flesh when he touched her.

His head tilted to one side and the mask made the movement seem almost owlish with its round shape and eye-holes. He did, in fact, have two eyes. She could see the right – the one that had before been covered by the shroud – glitter in the harsh light from the lantern, though not clearly. Just because it was there didn't necessarily mean he could use it.

He was turning her wrist in his hand, handling her by the manacle as he studied the skin around it. He tapped at the metal, lifting his face to hers to indicate the unvoiced question.

"I—"

Her voice broke in her throat. She swallowed, feeling as though all her words had fled, screaming, from her.

"I'm fine."

She was not fine. But there was nothing to be done, and surely nothing he would do about it. His eyes had creased, disbelieving, as he examined her other wrist. But she had nothing else to say to him.

Her eyes averted, fell, trailed along the line of his bent leg to find the machete tucked in its sheath there. It occurred to her in a flash that she could reach it. The handle was mere inches away from her hand, and if she was swift enough, she could pull it free...and do what with it, chained in place as she was? He would simply overpower her and take it back. She glanced back up to find him watching her calmly, unconcerned. Clearly he did not find her a threat. She didn't find that confidence unearned.

Again he tapped at her manacles, tilting his head again as if saying: _but really._

Whitney's brain hurt. How was she supposed to do this – to reconcile the brutal killer with the man who bandaged her wrists against chafing, who scolded her for not drinking enough water?

"I'm fine," she repeated, though it was barely more than a whisper. She pulled at her wrists until he relinquished them, letting her slip from his grasp to fold her hands against her stomach. She felt strangely fragile, as though something in her were perilously close to breaking. Either that or she was about to start ugly-crying like there was no tomorrow. "I just want to sleep."

He regarded her, and the usual silence now felt heavy, strained with her discomfort and her conflict. After a moment however he rose to his feet and left her, allowing her to curl up on the little blue-striped mattress.

In the end, she didn't cry. But neither did she sleep.

* * *

 **NOTES:**

The second half of this chapter ended up being rather difficult to write. Originally I wasn't going to have the Donnie-killing scene happen this early, but as most writers will tell you - sometimes stories have their own agendas and, regardless of our planning, they will have their way. I don't mind because for although I have a soft spot in my heart for sack-head Jason, the mask is iconic, and allows for much more expression, which I'm quite happy to have sooner rather than later. And, like most other things in this movie - the in-film timing didn't feel right. I did struggle with it a bit, though. Hopefully it comes across all right!

Next chapter is going to start some time-skipping. I haven't yet decided if I'm going to try filling all six weeks, or if I'm going to shift that as well. We'll have to see. I'm also going to be trying for longer chapters as we go on - starting with this one. For reasons.

Credit to Emily Bronte for the quotation from "Wuthering Heights," which I also, in fact, hate for the same reasons Whitney does. No offense intended to anyone who likes it, it's simply not to my taste.

Lastly, I want to take the opportunity to state something plainly just in case. Due to 's lack of a tagging feature and synopsis character limit I feel that some early notes might have been missed or forgotten. **This story is eventually going to feature romance between Jason and Whitney.** That's the trajectory we're on. I've received a few reviews that are giving me the impression that this might not be something they want or appreciate. If that's the case, I would recommend stepping away from the story from this point onward. No judgment, no hard feelings, and thank you for reading! But I would rather not receive reviews of dismay or disappointment or anger or anything of that sort. If this isn't your cup of tea - FAIR WARNING.

Once again, thank you so much to everyone for reading, and for the reviews and follows! It's all very much appreciated.

Until next time!


	6. Walk This World

**Chapter 6**  
Walk This World

~/13/~

 **Day 10**

Bathing herself in a tiny sink with hand soap wasn't the hardest thing Whitney had ever done. It definitely wasn't the easiest, either.

She had needed a shower something awful. She made it to day seven before becoming truly disturbed by the strength of her own reek. There were showers in the bathroom building: she had seen them tucked behind the toilet stalls. But even if she had been able to muster the courage to ask, a shower wasn't something she could manage with just one hand and there was no way Jason would unchain her completely regardless of the fact that her chances of escape were in the negative. So she had done what she could with what she had – a sink and some soap, and a fair amount of foul language.

This was her second of such makeshift cleansings, and it was as awkward as the first had been. Because of the chain, she was unable to completely remove her shirt or bra and was therefore forced to let them bunch at the manacle while she scrubbed at herself with one of the stack of towels that had, by seemingly her only stroke of luck, been left behind and within reach. She could, at least, take off her jeans and underwear to wash properly there, but as she turned her underwear inside out and slid them back on with a grimace, she knew this was not a status quo she could maintain. At some point she was going to have to figure out a way to wash her clothes. At some point she was going to have to communicate her need to do so, though she was uncertain how well that would go considering he never seemed to either change or wash _his_ clothes. Maybe they didn't for him, but at some point a lack of clean clothes was going to cause her some problems.

Well. That was a bridge for another day.

A soft knocking came from her right and she started, clutching her jeans to herself as she whirled toward the open threshold to find that Jason wasn't there at all. He was still outside, likely simply checking in to make sure she wasn't trying to drown herself since she was taking far longer this time than she had on any previous bathroom excursion.

"Just a second—" she called, her pulse throbbing nervously in her throat. She wasn't sure why, after all, if he hadn't tried by now he wasn't likely to go out of his way to see her naked. In fact, he probably wanted to see her naked just about as much as he wanted to step on his own machete since she looked like his mom and everything. There was so much wrong with this whole situation. Not the least of which was how little it phased her now compared to little more than a week ago.

A _week._ Christ on a cupcake.

She shoved her legs back into her pants, nearly tipping over and smashing her head into the sink as she jammed her feet into her shoes. Her bra had been anything but new when she'd gotten there, but now the nude color was closer to walnut now than apricot, it had become so saturated with sweat. And it would likely stay that way. Her shirt was likewise forever marked by her time here – ten days according to the tally on her wall and the bruising at her wrists – having turned a whole three shades darker at the armpits, down the back, and below the bra-line. That wasn't going to come out with washing, even if she destroyed the structural integrity of the fabric in the effort.

The shirt was dragged back into place, instantly quashing the feeling of being clean. She draped her towel over the counter. If the weather remained as hot as it had been it would be completely dry and then some by the time she came back. Her hair, on the other hand, was a different story. It was a tangled, greasy mess and as much as she itched to dunk her head in the sink and scrub like the dickens, she knew enough about the texture of her own hair to know that unleashing cheap anti-bacterial soap intended for hands was not going to result in any improvement. At best it would simply overcompensate and become greasier. Her vanity (and the state of her scalp) was just going to have to wait.

Last of all, she settled the locket back into place around her neck, where it had rested since the day he'd put it there. Mostly because if having it there served as reminder or incentive enough for him to not kill her then she would wear it without complaint. Yet it also felt... _wrong –_ in some odd, warped kind of way – to remove it when its placement there had seemed so significant. Disrespectful. As if her wearing it served as penance for her part in trespassing upon the house that had not been abandoned; a literal millstone about her neck. Upon exiting the bathroom she found Jason waiting as she always did, and if he thought it odd that she had taken so long he didn't wait for any explanation. He re-affixed her manacle, turned, and started off.

After having walked to and from the house to the bathroom twice a day for nine straight days Whitney had a perfect sense of how long the trek took. What was more, he only ever took her the one way – a clear, distinct route from point A to B without any pauses, stops, or detours. It was because of this that it only took her a few minutes to realize they weren't taking the path she remembered. He had not led her back through the camp, but rather veered off to the right and into the woods.

Unease flickered through her. The days since the corpse incident had passed with a sort of strained peace, during which she had gradually reestablished her assumption that whatever he had done or intended to do with the body hadn't affected his decision regarding whether or not to keep her alive. Still, never before had he broken their routine, minus the time he had returned early and caught her with the broken lantern. But that was different. It was one thing for his comings and goings to vary, but in his direct dealings with her he was nothing if not consistent. She was not too proud to admit that it made her nervous, if not fearful for her life. Logic decreed it unlikely that she was in any danger, but as logic had spent the better part of a week held by the throat with panic, it was a little weary and easily overridden. Still she supposed she should assume it to be nothing unless proven otherwise.

The day had the makings of a hot one, but for now it was pleasantly warm with the sun filtering down through the canopy of greenery. Birds flitted about the branches above them, sharing bird gossip as they went about their daily routines. The air was clean and dewy in the way of early morning, the earth cool beneath her feet, and she felt as though she could _breathe_ again – that her lungs had the freedom to fully expand for the first time since she didn't remember when _._ Perhaps since before she had left for the trip. And the movement...god, the movement was nothing short of delicious. By then they had gone about half a mile and it was so nice to be able to walk for longer than the ten minutes twice a day she usually got, to stretch out muscles that felt as though they had been shrinking – literally wasting away as she sat for endless hours bored out of her skull.

It was then that Whitney realized he had taken her for a walk.

Her eyes traveled from the craggy shape of an old fallen tree to her captor's broad back, wondering how he had picked up on her fatigue. Surely he had no basis for comparison. Had it been a guess, or was he truly that perceptive? She supposed ultimately it didn't matter – she was getting sorely needed exercise, her joints no longer brittle and stiff, the why was inconsequential. Or was it?

He was so impossibly big, but he moved so smoothly that sometimes her mind had trouble processing what she saw, turned the movement into something spectacular. It made him seem all the more like some supernatural being rather than a man. Which he might have been. Otherwise he had simply trained himself to such an enviable grace. Either way, he was much quieter than she, smaller as she was, as they made their way through the undergrowth.

There was an interesting rightness to the sight of him here, amidst the birds and wild blackberries, the flowering trees dispersed among the evergreens. He fit here in a way that she did not. Not merely because it was the space in which he was home, although that was part of it. It was his utter separateness from civilization in all its constant chaos. Nature was chaos too, of course, but the chaos of human nature seemed almost intrinsically at war with nature in the way it sought to shape and change that which would do neither. He was humanity at its very root, the way it once had been – moving with the current of the earth rather than against it.

What did he do when he wasn't killing? Did he search for food and supplies like any other man that lived out in the wilderness like this might? Or did he simply revert to a state of rest, a sentinel of stone to be awakened again upon the next inevitable intrusion upon this land he guarded? And make no mistake it was his land now, whether it had begun that way or not. It would be easy to believe he was something other. But somehow she didn't think he was. At least, not entirely.

The absence of the bag had left more than just his right eye uncovered. She could clearly see his neck now; thick with muscle as she'd surmised it must be, though said muscle lay somewhat oddly at the right side, as though it had twisted under the skin. The back of his head was visible now too, covered only by the straps which held his new mask in place, and while she had only guessed that the second picture in the locket must be him as a little boy she knew now without a doubt that it was. It was different from the back, but the enlargement of the cranium was too similar to be just coincidental. As with the neck muscle, it was primarily the right side that was affected. The skull shape was lumpy and uneven as though it had bulged slightly under pressure and settled that way, which could be clearly seen through an extremely sparse amount of hair. What strands he did have were long enough to brush his collar, thin and wispy and pale, the color of sun-bleached wheat.

Almost all the stories she'd heard – limited almost solely to the ones Wade had delighted (and insisted) in telling – declared him to be deformed. From the sound of them, she might have expected someone with a hunched back and a twisted leg, someone who struggled to move or to function. Jason did not fit the image painted for her.

Unless...unless she wasn't yet seeing the worst of it. Perhaps that was why he hid his face. That was all it would really take, after all. As tolerant and enlightened as it pretended to be, the world was cruel to anyone who deviated too much from what its perceived threshold of normalcy. He most certainly would have been old enough to feel the sting of that cruelty and young enough to be scarred by it, poor thing.

She frowned. The thought had come to her naturally. It was instinctive to sympathize with suffering, a trait that was likely to be her greatest asset and worst enemy when she began her nursing career. She didn't reject the sentiment, after all suffering was suffering, yet the cruelty she imagined – and she could imagine quite a bit – did not justify killing.

When they came to the stream Jason stopped. His head had been in constant motion along the way, swiveling from side to side as he scanned the spaces around them, and he had routinely angled his face back to check on her as they walked. She knew he'd heard her tromping along behind him, felt her weight at the end of the chain. It had seemed more like he was making sure she was doing all right rather than to ensure she was still there. Yet now he turned to her properly, beckoning her to the water. Cupping his empty hand he made a shallow scooping motion and lifted it to his mask to mime drinking. She understood what he wanted, but hesitated before kneeling at the water's edge. The stream was shallow, though it was wide and moving relatively quickly. And she _was_ thirsty – which meant she was already dehydrated…

In the end it was her firm belief that he would not direct her to drink something dangerous which coaxed her to lower her hands into the water and bring it to her mouth. She drank slowly, filling her hands several times with spring-water that flowed cool and sweet down her throat. After days of tepid bottled water, it was an unexpected moment of pleasure. She savored every mouthful, eyes drifting closed in relish.

Something touched her shoulder – a graze of fingertips barely more than a whisper. Blinking, she tilted her chin to see Jason sinking into a crouch beside her, the motion so smooth and slow that it was almost liquid. He was pointing to something across the stream, wanting her to look. She did so automatically, and felt the breath leave her in a rush.

Downstream, not five yards from where they were, stood two deer: a mother and her fawn.

They were sleek and spindly-legged, the fawn still young enough to be dappled white as if flecked with snow. Each lowered a narrow face to the water, long necks bending in graceful arcs to drink.

Whitney had seen deer before, but never so close. She watched, captivated, everything inside her quieting at the sight of the animals that seemed utterly unaware of the people in their midst.

The fawn tottered on its tiny feet: gangling, too-long legs folding to bound sideways and directly into its mother's body. Patiently unperturbed, the deer continued to drink as her offspring tangled itself between her hind legs. A smile curved the corners of her mouth. Impulsively she turned her head, some muted murmur of delight on her lips because they were so lovely and majestic and she had to, _needed_ to, share it. Yet it was not her brother next to her, not her boyfriend. Not a friend.

Jason's eye had been fixed to the deer, but now it shifted, lowering until it met hers – steady and… _soft_ \- and for a brief, lightning snap of an instant it was like looking into the reflection of her own fleeting joy. Reality slammed into her like a freight train, throwing her utterly off her axis. Her smile slipped as her stomach gave a strange little twist, as she realized what she had just done. Because how could she have forgotten, even for those seconds, where she was?

Or with whom?

Quickly she looked away, dragging her focus back to the deer. The mother was lifting her head from the water, large liquid brown eyes surveying her surroundings until they came to rest on the two humans. Her triangular ears pricked forward as she studied them with what appeared to be more interest than concern. Whitney did not have the space in her brain to consider why that might be. She was far too consumed by the discomfort gnawing at her bones.

He was still looking at her, and she felt his gaze far more keenly than she ever had before.

In no way had she been prepared for what had just happened; to see anything akin to gentle wonder in the same eye that had burned black with rage. Even in spite of her decision that he was a person like she was – breathing and thinking and feeling – she had still automatically assumed him to be incapable of feeling anything close to tenderness. It had been easier to believe that. Easier to believe that he simply _couldn't_ enjoy something like watching a beautiful, graceful animal the way she could. Because if he couldn't, then it made everything else that much easier to swallow. Clearly her assumptions were wrong. She had seen the gentleness there, the same spark of wonder that she had felt at the simple, glorious magic of getting so clear a look at something wonderful.

Had she truly forgotten that it was him beside her as she knelt there with metal about her wrists and chain coiled in her lap? Surely she must have – but in hindsight she couldn't be sure, which was far more disturbing than anything else. If she had forgot, then she was remaining nowhere near as mindful as she should. If she hadn't, what did that say? Was it a coping mechanism, some necessity in order to remain sane? Or was it something else? Something...worse?

~/~

Something was wrong. He didn't know what it was or what had caused it, but he knew it was.

Though he had been reminding himself that he should for days now, Jason had made up his mind to take Whitney for a walk when he had caught her wincing as she got up to follow him the night before. The bed he'd made for her was well enough, but he could tell that regardless of how comfortable it may or may not have been, spending so much time there was not doing her any amount of good. It had taken only seconds for him to know he'd made the right decision. He had almost felt the soreness leave her. With every step she grew less stiff, her bones and joints becoming less tight, less like a dying tree branch cracking beneath its own weight.

Initially he had intended to go on with his rounds as he normally would, check his snares and wires, but had found himself loathe to interrupt the gentle harmony of the stroll. Perhaps it had been the pace, slower than he would have taken on his own to accommodate her smaller frame. Or perhaps it had been the sound of her steps behind him: loud, yes, but somehow studious – as though she were aware of the noise she made and exerted effort to lessen it. Or the way he had seen her take a moment here and there to simply stand amidst the green, eyes closed and face turned up to the light as if to absorb it into herself like the plant life around her, fingertips skimming the clusters of tiny, delicate white flowers on the thorny brambles they passed. Whatever the reason, he had found himself passing the traps unchecked; content simply to be in his woods, taking the time to see it as he rarely did anymore. To see it as she seemed to – as a source of beauty, and of peace.

Now, though, she did not appear at peace.

Alerting her to the presence of the deer had been impulsive, something done without thinking. Spending his days in the woods meant he saw plenty of animals, but deer were elusive, skittish, and for good reason. To see them, and so close, was a rarity. He might have thought alerting her was to prevent her from doing something to scare them off, yet when he'd seen her nearly vibrating with excitement at the sight of them he noted his precaution had been unnecessary. She had radiated joy like a flame did heat, and he had not been surprised, but pleased.

Her hair had gleamed copper in the patchy streams of sunlight, catching his eye as she angled her head toward him, and he'd had just long enough to see the blazing remnants of her smile before it faded in a dull rush. It had been like a cloud drifting across the sun, dimming the light in her to leave bewildered alarm in its place. A tiny furrow had formed between her brows the split instant before she tore her eyes from his.

She was tight as a coil of wire where she knelt, her eyes fixed on the deer now retreating back into the brush without truly seeing them. When she stood she was shaky, almost…compressed, as though nursing an injury he was more than certain she did not have. The sudden snap from such unbridled joy to this tight discomfort confused him. He didn't understand what had happened to cause it. Had he done something? All he'd done was look at her…but perhaps that was enough.

He resumed walking, confident that she would follow and content to relegate his puzzlement to some nuance in the interactions of people that he simply didn't have the knowledge to understand. Possibly didn't _want_ to understand.

It was habit to be watchful as he traversed even on his own land. He listened, filtering through the menial noise of forest life, of wind or rain or animal noises. He watched, surveying the grounds so familiar for disturbances beyond what nature could have caused. It was to his benefit to be aware and to his detriment not to be. Having someone trailing in his footsteps was not so habitual, and he found himself continuously looking back at her. He knew she was there, yet it was as if that in itself was the reason behind the compulsion to look, as if to reaffirm that he was not, in fact, dreaming.

She was following as she had before, but the ease in her steps had subsided to a nervous rigidity. She was rather like the deer, he thought, with her long limbs and her instinctive proclivity toward caution. She was tall and sleek and smooth like they were. Yet she still wore a frown as solidly as she wore her shirt or shoes. Again he felt himself mirroring it, wondering what had caused the change and wondering why it bothered him as much as it evidently did.

It was nearly noon and though they had nearly made it back to the house he was becoming anxious to get her inside and under cover as she was already starting to droop under the heat. Then, out of nowhere, she spoke.

"Can I ask you something?"

Jason stopped to gawk at her. Since the day he had dispatched the boy in barn she had not spoken much outside of what might have been deemed absolutely necessary. He had put it down to having reminded her of what he was. Though it would have shocked him had she forgotten in the first place, as it seemed so unlike her to do so. Not when she had only days before been trying so intently to get away.

She seemed to take his having turned to her as assent, because she wet her lips – a quick, darting, nervous motion – before asking, "do you—do you _like_ killing?"

A frown creased between his brows, though she could not see it, puzzled by the odd question. He didn't understand what she was asking. Did he find satisfaction in fulfilling his vow? Unquestionably. There were only a few things he truly enjoyed in the world and that was the most vital one of them. Yet something told him that wasn't what she meant.

As if she noticed his confusion, she repeated, "Do you like it. Does it make you…happy?"

Jason was no longer sure he knew what _happy_ was. He remembered what it was supposed to be, what he thought it had felt like, though he wasn't sure how reliable the remembrance of feeling could be. The light in her face, like sun on water at the sight of the deer. _That_ was what happiness looked like. Killing did not produce such a light in him. Killing was fulfilling a purpose, a mandate; it was rewarding, but it did not make him happy.

When he shook his head, she visibly relaxed. The nervous wrongness wasn't completely gone, but it had lessened somewhat. Her eyes – somewhat hazy a moment ago – cleared as her gaze lifted to his face, and just for an instant he thought he saw the ghost of the smile she had lost.

"I've never seen deer so close before," she said softly, and he blinked, momentarily thrown. "That was amazing."

No doubt about it, being baffled appeared to be Jason's new normal state of being. But it was at least interesting.

~/~

 **Day 12**

 _"It would degrade me to marry Heathcliff now; so he shall never know how I love him: and that, not because he's handsome, Nelly, but because he's more myself than I am."_

With a guttural, gut-deep noise of disgust Whitney slammed the covers of book closed. She had known better, she really had. She knew all opening the book would accomplish would be to make her irrationally angry. Yet she had held out for as long as she could before the boredom reached the point of intolerability and she found herself reaching automatically for the comfort of the pages and the escape they promised. And escape they had provided. Of a sort. If one could call reaching heights of irrational intellectual anger escape.

Unthinking, she drew her arms back and threw the book across the space where it hit the corner of the threshold with a thump...just as Jason appeared at its mouth. He jerked to a stop, chin dropping to follow the book as it fell to the floor in a flutter of pages, appearing almost alarmed if the sudden streak of tension that strained the seams of his coat over his shoulders was anything to go by.

Whitney ducked her head slightly, at once self-conscious and a little worried. "Sorry," she whispered, not wanting him to think she had been deliberately trying to hurl something _at_ him. She'd narrowly missed hitting his head, after all.

Bending at the knees, he plucked the disheveled thing from the dirt, turning it over in his hands to examine the cover as though it might have some secret to divulge. Then he turned his masked face to look at her, curious and questioning.

She gave a little half-shrug, somewhat embarrassed by her outburst. "It's," she began haltingly, "kind of an unsatisfying story." He continued to watch her, waiting for her to elaborate. "Well—the characters are just really unlikeable. They're supposedly soulmates, but they spend the entire book making each other's lives miserable and just generally being horrible people. So..." She made a vague _and there you have it_ gesture as if the explanation she'd given fully justified her having chucked a perfectly good book across the room.

Unmoving, he merely kept watching her, his head tilting slightly in that way he did when he wanted to convey that he didn't understand something, or sometimes when he was simply baffled by her undoubtedly strange habits and tendencies.

"I shouldn't have thrown it. I'm sorry. You didn't have to bring me a book, and I'm grateful."

She held out her hands for it with a muted rattle, vowing next time to relegate her fits of voyeuristic reader-rage to punching her pillow instead. Yet rather than hand it back to her, Jason tucked the paperback into a coat pocket before turning directly around to vanish back down the tunnel entrance without even having fully entered. Her stomach sank. Well, she'd deserved that. No books for her if she couldn't treat them nicely. Still, she regretted the badly-timed flash of temper, and regretted more that it had doomed her to a fate of inescapable, brain-slaughtering boredom.

Some minutes later – minutes or an hour, she had no way to know – she heard the now-familiar thud preceding the steps down the tunnel, bringing her dinner, she supposed. When he rounded the corner, however, it was not her bowl he carried but another old wooden crate like the he'd overturned next to her bed-nest to serve her as a table of sorts – this one filled nearly to the brim with books. He carried it across the dirt floor and set it down next to the first crate, well within rummaging distance. Something twisted in her chest: a sharp, vicious wrench of emotion that welled in her like blood from a wound. It was at once happiness and sorrow and shame, guilt and pleasure, a strange flash of affection, and a thousand other things at once; and for a moment she could hardly breathe for fear she wouldn't simply start sobbing like an infant.

He had risen to take a step back, masked face still tilted down. But though she couldn't see his eyes for the thick shadows, she could tell he was glancing from her to the crate and back, waiting. Hoping?

"Oh."

That was all she could manage – she had neither the wit nor the breath for anything else. Her eyes were fixed on the mound of books. There must have been fifty or so ranging from brand new to thoroughly loved, some shiny, some dusty and wrinkled.

She blinked once, and looked up. Then blinked again. His head was tilted, but this time with the subtle inflection of inquiry.

"Where did you get all these?"

He wouldn't answer, but she asked it all the same, as though the question itself were more statement than any statement might have had the power to be. The shrug he gave was somewhat lopsided as if in reference more to the hither and thither nature of the acquisitions than that he didn't know. Here and there. In the bags of travelers. Left in cabins or rescued from where they'd been abandoned along the trails.

Reaching with tentative hands, she ran her fingers over the cover of the topmost book: an old, obviously loved copy of The Wizard of Oz. So old that the paper on the covers had been pressed, with a weave not unlike that of cloth, and was separating slightly from the board which fortified it. Still, the glue held, even through whatever abuse the volume had suffered. There was no cracking along the spine, no pulled stitches among the pages. However old fashioned it made her seem, they truly did not make books the way they used to, back when the cost to create one was worth the time it would last.

Neither the presence of the books nor the number surprised her much. She had known she wasn't the only person who took books along with her on vacations, and thereby it made sense that they would get lost or be left behind. It was that rather than leave them to return to the earth like so much paper, he had chosen to rescue them, gather them up and tuck them safely away as though they were worth keeping. As if they were important, if not beloved.

That was unexpected.

She was not so foolish – or so cruel – to assume that just because he didn't speak he must also be incapable of reading, but if her estimations were right he couldn't have spent much time in school. Still, just because she hadn't seen him read didn't mean anything at all. Neither had she seen him eat, and yet he must. Had he taught himself, as he had engineered the alarms? Or was this another hint as to the nature of the man that had once been a boy, much in the way she had been a girl. She could think of no other reason why she said what she did then, other than out of some instinctual need or desire for contact and connection the human in her demanded, whether it happened to humanize her captor or not.

"Books might be my favorite things in the world," she said, gently fingering a small tear at the bottom-most inner corner of a page; the place where a person holding the novel one-handed would use their thumb to turn it. "My mom would read to me every night when I was little. One chapter a night from books I was probably supposed to be too little to understand. I didn't really care if I didn't get some of the words. I just wanted her to keep reading, keep making all those other people and other worlds seem real."

For a long moment she debated whether or not to ask her next question. If she was unlucky, it might upset him. Finally, caving under curiosity, she took the risk.

"Did your mom ever read to you?" He hesitated, shifting slightly, and her heart sank. Maybe upsetting wasn't the right way to think of it. Maybe it was simply too painful to think about his mother. If she understood nothing else, she understood that.

She was just about to rescind the question when he nodded. Just once. A tiny, almost imperceptible incline of his head that she might have missed had she not been looking directly at him.

"These?"

Another pause, then a small shake. Somehow, though, she got the feeling that the pause was not for the same reason as before. It hadn't been uncertainty, but rather...embarrassment?

Wade's story popped unbidden into her mind: _"He was...deformed, or retarded. Or something."_ It wasn't out of the question, whether it was hydrocephalus that had caused the cranial shape or something else, cognitive difficulties often came hand in hand. If he was slow, she couldn't tell. One thing she knew for certain was that he was _not_ stupid. In fact, she would have argued that he was truly smarter than most of the so-called _normal_ people she knew. She imagined he had been sheltered, kept perhaps a bit too close for a bit too long. But innocence was not the same as retardation, and while he might not have been book smart, he was plenty sharp in the ways that mattered. As sharp as the blade he kept as close and dear as a beloved pet.

Still, fully understanding she might be prodding a sore spot, she pressed gently, "Do you like to read?"

Another pause, far longer this time. So long, in fact, that she wondered whether he had heard or simply decided not to answer. When he did nod, it was slightly skewed. Like an indication of: _sort of,_ or _sometimes._

"Is it hard?" His gaze averted almost instantly, falling to the floor in a way that made her think of a child afraid of a scolding. No...ofjudgment. She swallowed, uncertain, but hopeful. "I understand."

A flicker behind his mask. His eyes rising slightly, yet not quite settling on her as if he couldn't quite bring himself to. Instead his gaze seemed to fix on her hands, the book cradled between them like some precious and delicate, like something living.

"I'm awful at math. None of it makes sense to me. It's like the numbers don't sit still and when they do it's like looking at a completely alien language." She lifted a shoulder in a tiny shrug. "We all have things we're good at and things we're not, it's part of being individuals. So reading is hard for you," she gave another little shrug. "I can't move like you can. I don't hear things the way you do. If I'd been left alone out here for years, I wouldn't have survived. But you did."

Jason blinked at her, and she almost smiled at the surprise evident in the tiny backward jerk of his head.

"See? Different skills. Each is important in different ways. Although I'd argue your skills are way more valuable than mine are. Survival...reading books." She held up her hands flat, palms up, lifting one and lowering the other like the two pans of a scale. "One definitely outweighs the other."

For a moment there was silence. Then, out of nowhere, there was a soft, dry rasp of sound – sharp and short – breath expelled from expansive lungs, and Whitney started. It took her almost five full seconds to realize the sound had come from Jason. His eyes were crinkled at the corners, but not, she deduced, out of concern or consideration or any of the other numerous expressions she had seen thus far. No, it was with warmth, with amusement. He was _smiling._ She would have bet her soul and the entire crate of books on it. Which meant the sound must have been...a _laugh._

She stared, dumbstruck, as the amusement cracked and shifted into bewilderment, until they were looking at one another with what she would bet were matching expressions of bafflement.

They watched each other while the seconds passed, frozen, and it was unclear whether they watched with animal caution or curiosity. Perhaps a bit of each. Jason was the first to break the impasse, making a vague, sweeping gesturing from the near-overflowing crate to her. He placed his hands together, palm to palm, and opened them hinged at the smallest fingers to mimic parting the covers of the book she held.

 _For you. Read._

Once again she felt the sharp stab of overwhelming emotion, and she was thankful he had turned to go before he could see her blink away the liquid that had begun to well up in her eyes. She swallowed thickly. It was such a little thing: a simple thing begun with the thoughtful gift of the paperback he'd probably just happened upon and figured to leave for her. The paperback which he had not brought back, as though keenly recognizing that it had offended her, if not completely understanding why. While maybe the gift of the first book might simply have been under the motive of keeping her occupied and quiet, the gift of more was one made out of real kindness.

She inhaled deeply, willing the emotion to pass, and put down the book she held in favor of another. A softly worn James Patterson novel. Not something she would have sought out on her own, but also not something she would discard without perusing first. She laid it down and picked up the next one, turning it over to look at the sleek, shiny yellow cover to find the first in a new series of adult fantasy novels she had been lusting over for months. A brand new hardcover copy at that.

It was Whitney's turn to laugh then, at the absurdity of it all: coincidence and happenstance and luck both good and ill. That she could be so unfortunate as to wind up here in this small slice of hell, and yet be so auspicious as to be presented with a prize like this one somehow within almost the very same breath. She laughed so hard that the tears she'd thought she had banished began to stream down her face, cutting clean trails through the layer of sweat. Laughed until her sides cramped and her cheeks ached. Laughed until she vaguely began to worry that she wouldn't be able to stop.

Whitney couldn't remember the last time she had laughed like that. She hadn't laughed much at all lately – something that had bothered Mike rather more than she had been able to handle. He hadn't understood.

How could he? How could anyone with no knowledge of what it was like to take care of their dying parent while trying to balance school and a job, and keeping their insides from bursting out of them in a hurricane of rage and fear and misery. Apathy had been her armor against the pain.

Still, she'd pasted on smile after smile for him, pretending his attempts to distract or cheer her hadn't grated at her when in truth they had dug under her skin like needles. Even that night, after he had divulged that he had convinced her to come camping upon Ellen's request, his joking attempts to be normal had felt like the punchline to an insult begun that morning – a remark upon her inability to be there in the capacity that he wanted her to be. In the moment, as he'd made blithe remarks about getting drunk and having sex, it had taken all she had to grit her teeth to keep from snapping back: _my mom is_ dying, _damn it!_

Sniffling, she set the book down on the overturned crate and swiped halfheartedly at her cheeks. The remembrance might have strangled the fit of laughter, but so too had it brought to light things she had forgotten under the stress of fearing for her life. Stress that had forced her to look back at things through a lens more rose-colored than true. Things like the fact that she had been considering on and off whether she should break up with Mike for over a month prior to the trip. Not that that mattered much now. Mike was gone and she...she was coping as best she could under the care of her captor.

Her captor. Slash caretaker slash babysitter slash...whatever else he was.

Somewhere between the moment with the deer and right here and now she had come to realize that finding ways to see him as more than just her _captor_ was not a bad thing. Empathy was rarely given the credit it was due, or so she'd learned working with sick and hurting people. It had the power to build bridges as much as to heal, and the longer Whitney spent in Jason's vicinity the more she was starting to wonder if the way out of this situation wasn't in _fighting_ him. Fighting was doing nothing other than leading her in circles. What if the way forward was in simple human connection?

He had claimed not to like killing, and for whatever it might be worth she believed him. She could think of no reason he could have to lie, and when she looked back on the horrors she'd seen she couldn't recall any sense of delight or invigoration, even satisfaction. She could remember only resolve. A task accomplished. He might not be good as she had been taught, but she was no longer convinced that he was something evil, either. She didn't really believe in evil in the biblical sense – she hadn't been raised in a religious household and had never picked it up – but she did believe in human evil, as she had believed him to be at first. To his view, the things he did were likely necessary, if not exactly good. Frankly, in Whitney's eyes no one capable of treasuring books they could not read could be entirely awful.

She sorted through the contents of the crate one book at a time, dividing them into piles according to condition. The newer or less worn books she re-stacked on the bottom, leaving the more battered and thereby delicate books to rest on top without quite so much weight to crush them beyond the abuse already suffered. The task was menial and quickly over, yet she was so happy having something to do after nearly two weeks of nothing that it didn't matter. Jason could have left her down here with cleaning supplies and expected her to wash the dirt floor and she would have done it simply to occupy her mind. Fortunately for her, she didn't have to descend quite so far into the ridiculous in order to be occupied now. She had a crate full of books – only two of which she had already read. If she had to be here, there were far worse ways to spend her time.

That night Jason brought her some kind of meat along with her bowl of canned green beans; hot, shredded, and freshly charred from cooking. She eyed it, torn between equal parts hunger and curiosity. It looked like chicken, with the same pale meat and almost stringy texture so unlike that of pork or red meats. But she didn't remember seeing or hearing any chickens, and she couldn't really see him stealing her one from a neighbor. She had seen the shelves of canned goods on the way back from a bathroom excursion - shelves upon shelves with each shelf stacked at least three cans deep – and knew they weren't anywhere close to running out.

"What is it?" she asked, cautiously picking up a piece with her fingers and quickly dropping it lest she scald herself. He must have pulled it right off a fire, it was so hot.

Lifting one great hand Jason folded his fingers inward but for the index and middle ones which he separated slightly and curved as he held the hand aloft. She squinted at him, waiting for the meaning of the gesture to hit her. He moved his hand, a stilted bouncing motion that looked so ridiculous paired with a hand so large that she smiled.

"What?" she repeated, having to work against the laughter in her voice to get it out.

He made soft huffing sound, like breath pressed sharply between the lips. Again he repeated the bouncing – a bit more vigorously this time.

"Oh!" She pointed at the plate of shredded meat, "it's rabbit?"

He nodded enthusiastically, his eyes bright with a childlike elation at the correct guess that for a flash of a second she felt as purely as she saw – a warm, simple joy flooding between skin and muscle.

When she looked back down at the food it was with a dubious consideration.

Well...she supposed rabbits had been hunted for food long before even her grandparents had been born. She did feel a little sad, but when it came right down to it, there was no difference between a bunny and a chicken or a cow, only that two had been decreed food animals by a combination of social and capitalist culture. All meat had once been a living thing, and if she was going to eat she couldn't pretend otherwise, or be squeamish about it. And she had to eat. In the real world, where survival was concerned, people didn't always have the freedom to be particular.

Picking up another morsel, she blew on it like she might have a spoon of too-hot soup. It hadn't been seasoned at all, and yet that one bit of meat might have been the best thing she'd eaten in her entire life. She actually moaned upon taking that first bite, and chewed so slowly that it might have been the better part of a minute before she swallowed. It wasn't the same kind of gusto she had shown with the first hot soup, but it was better. Something Jason seemed to recognize. He seemed almost shyly pleased as he watched her eat.

Something brushed her foot and she glanced down to see the long tail of a rat slip around the side of her crate. She squeaked instinctively, out of surprise more than fear, her eyes widening as she scanned her corner for any others. As much as she liked rats, she didn't really fancy the idea of any wild ones developing the habit of running around in her space. Though she supposed technically _she_ was the intruder in _their_ space.

Quick as a snake Jason's hand descended, scooping the rodent into a palm and gently depositing it a few feet away. When it circled back – drawn, no doubt, by the promising smell of food – he nudged it back until it subsided with what she imagined was a begrudging rodent grumble.

How strange, the juxtaposition of humans slaughtered like so much vermin and the vermin kindly corrected like an errant kitten. In her darkest points she had not felt dissimilar: that the value of man and beast was unbalanced in the extreme. A feeling that had seemed to be increasing right alongside the protective shell of apathy. The places inside her still tender and afraid wanted to shy away from the thought, not liking the possibility that she might share even this small fraction of a trait with him. But her mind was rather frank about it. She was no saint, in deed or thought, and she was not about to pretend that she hadn't ever wished brutal deaths upon people who wronged her or hers. Because she had, and plenty often. But she would never act on it...would she?

She stopped, hand pausing mid-transfer of another bit of meat to her mouth.

Would she?

 _"Primum non nocere." First, do no harm._

It wasn't technically part of the Hippocratic Oath, nor was she studying to be a doctor and therefore wouldn't be swearing the Oath anyway – but from the first time she had heard the phrase, long before she had decided to work in medicine, she had thought it beautiful. Beautiful, and _right._ She liked to think herself incapable of causing harm outside of the natural cycle of being alive in a brutal world, but could she really be sure? She had never really had to test that theory, had never been put in a position where she felt she must inflict harm in order to keep her life. Not even here, in her initial dealings with Jason, had she ever felt that instinctive need to break lest she be broken. She wasn't all that sure she would know if it she did feel it.

Jason was staring at her, a question in his steely eyes. However long she had been frozen like that, hand hovering in front of her mouth, it had been long enough to draw attention. She flushed slightly, feeling silly, and shoved the bite of rabbit into her mouth to combat the warmth in her cheeks.

"Um," she swallowed the meat, "could we go on another walk again sometime, like the other day? It was nice to get out, to walk around. I mean, I understand if not—" she really wouldn't, but that wasn't how one went about asking for extra things, was it? "—but I'd really appreciate it."

Jason tilted his head at her rather quizzically, and at first she thought he was displaying confusion at the concept to repeating the outing. But that wasn't right. His eyes had crinkled again at the outer corners in the smile she was quickly beginning to recognize. No. He was puzzling as to why she felt the need to ask, as if the answer was obvious.

She felt her lips curve, the answering smile somehow as natural as breathing. "Ok."

* * *

 **NOTES:**

Hello all!

Just a few quick notes on this one. Firstly, credit to Emily Bronte for the Wuthering Heights snippet.

Secondly, I want to mention that I will occasional break grammar and spelling rules in order to stay true to the way something sounds in my head. I'm pretty certain I did that at least once in this chapter, but I can't relocate where so I can't be specific. Outside of any obvious typos, if you find one of these chances are it's 99% likely to be on purpose. I went to college for writing and I'm stubborn as all get-out and want to do things my way - especially in a fan work!

Thirdly, I've been getting a few queries as to whether we'll be seeing any other characters. The answer is yes, sort of. I'll be going through the entire 2009 movie - and beyond - but exclusively from Jason and Whitney's POVs. We'll see a bit of Trent and Jenna and the others, but they're only ever secondary characters and really won't be getting very much time. The most we'll be seeing from any of the other film characters is Clay, but even then it isn't going to be a lot of him. I hope that helps!

And lastly, no one's mentioned it so I'm not sure if anyone's caught it: all my chapter titles are taken from song titles, all of which are in my playlist for this fic. Not every song is a direct translation to the chapter I assign it to. The titles match up, but in general the songs fit the story. Some are really easy to tell, some aren't. Just a fun fact!

Once again, thank you so much to everyone for reading: for your follows, your favorites, and your comments. I love you!

Until next time!


	7. Far From Home

**CHAPTER 7  
** Far From Home

~/13/~

 **Day 16**

It hadn't taken long for walks to become a part of their daily routine.

He wasn't sure if he'd actively decided it should be that way or if he simply navigated toward it, but at some point it became that way without either of them making mention of it. Every morning after delivering food and gathering supplies, he would take Whitney to the bathrooms after which Jason went about his morning rounds, captive in tow.

After that first time, he no longer ignored the snares and traps. Initially he had been concerned that seeing these might be upsetting for her, a reminder as to the unpleasant nature of how their individual lives had intersected. And at first this seemed true. She gave the leg-hold traps with their menacing rows of metal teeth a wide and wary berth, obviously still nursing the wound that was the memory of her friend's leg shredded between the jaws of one. Yet in spite of this, she had proven far more resilient than he expected. Rather than cringing or looking away, she had crouched nearby to watch as he set to work checking, resetting, and mending as necessary.

The work required the use of both hands, which meant he must relinquish his grip on the chain wrapped about his palm. He had done so cautiously at first, watching her narrowly out of the corner of his better eye, unsure whether she would note the lax grip and try to make a run for it. He would let her if she did, for he didn't relish the thought of the damage which might be done by yanking her back by the chain, but he truly didn't want to chase her again. In part for its own sake, but in his mind chasing would always be linked to fear and death. And while perhaps there would be no death for her, he didn't want her to associate him with fear anymore. He needn't have worried. Whitney never seemed to notice the slack on her chain, or if she did, she did nothing about it. She merely watched, her eyes had trained on the movements of his hands and the corners of her mouth turned down ever so slightly in what he had first thought to be a frown, but instead seemed to be an expression of intent focus.

Such as the one she wore now.

As the earth eroded and shifted with time and the passing of seasons the paths changed and moved, often rendering traps useless when their placement no longer aligned with the foot traffic and therefore needed relocating. They had come across one such snare yesterday and today he had brought the tools he needed to create a replacement – a task Whitney seemed to find especially interesting.

Kneeling across from him, she watched closely as he cut a length of steel cable from the coil he had brought along, forming a narrow loop at one end and locking it with a band of scrap metal crimped tightly in place by a set of pliers. This he wrapped about the base of his chosen tree, slipping the free end through the loop so that the cable closed snugly about the trunk. Jason showed her the snare itself, the ring of cable he had prepared in advance with a series of metal clamps which would close about a limb and tighten with movement. This was attached to the support cable with another bit of metal.

He used several variations on the same basic system, some for animals and some specifically for people. But every trap he set, regardless of variation, was rigged with certain parameters in mind.

Jason did what he could to make his traps noticeable to the wildlife. He couldn't always check them immediately, and he disliked how much pain and potential suffering this could potentially cause to a creature that had done him no wrong. Sometimes he was unsuccessful, which was sad and unpleasant and never failed to riddle him with guilt. But the traps were incredibly useful where it concerned keeping tabs on people – such as with Whitney's friend. So he kept them, even if sometimes he didn't really like them. Each snare was set to relax when the catch ceased struggling. It would not release, but it would ensure that nothing strangled or suffered damage to a limb. Each was laid with joints that would swivel so as not to break bone or strain tendon, allowing him to release any unwanted catch with minimal harm done.

He positioned the mouth of the snare low to the ground, low enough to ensure that any passing human would miss it until they'd been caught by a foot. Over the years he had perfected the method to be inescapable even for people with their clever hands, perfected the system so that they could strip their fingers down to the bone trying to pull and pick at the knots and joints and never get free. Most people didn't tend to carry implements to cut through cable like this, and those that did…well, they were a different kind of challenge. But a challenge that had never yet bested him.

"Do you only use these to catch people?"

His eyes shot to her, newly wary. She looked perfectly normal, her face smooth of the thoughtful not-quite-frown and gaze steady on the anchored loop of cable. He didn't know what to make of the question, his hand tightening instinctively around the chain.

She blinked once, her eyelashes forming a dark fringe across her cheekbones for a fraction of a second before she peered up at him, seeming to realize his uncertainty. "Sorry," she added, "I mean, is that all you use these for, or do you use them to hunt food, too? Did the rabbit come from a snare like this?"

Jason nodded, still somewhat bemused. The rabbit he'd brought her had been just one of his accidental catches. Normally he would have simply released it, reset the snare, and gone about his business, but in the moment it had occurred to him that she might like something other than the canned food. As he had eaten plenty of rabbits himself in the early days and knew how to dress and cook them, it had seemed an easy solution. He hadn't yet, but he kept hoping he might come across another, since she'd seemed to like it so much.

He didn't actively hunt for food, though. Not anymore. The last time he'd actually eaten was several days ago, when he'd felt what he'd assumed was the gnaw of hunger in his gut and had subsequently tried a can of soup. He'd discovered she was right: the canned things did actually taste better when heated. He wouldn't go so far as to deem it _good,_ but it had been better than he remembered food being.

At the memory he felt a niggling urge to report the discovery to her; one immediately chased swiftly by a pang of annoyance at his limited capacity for communication.

He wasn't sure he had answered her question – questions? – satisfactorily, but she seemed appeased, nodding absently as she surveyed the completed snare. He wished he knew of some better way to talk to her other than simply pointing or responding directly to closed-ended statements. It would certainly make the course of each day easier, but it would also enable him to ask her things. Things that extended to realms beyond simply her state of being.

When it had originally occurred to him that he should take her outside to walk around it had simply been a means to an end, like everything else. Yet from the start none of the things he had added to his daily list of tasks on her behalf had ever been hardships. Within the past few days he had come to realize that he was actually rather enjoying the company. He supposed it made sense in a way – he had spent so long yearning for companionship as a child. But he had thought that yearning purged from him, another piece of himself made sacrifice to the events of the past. If not purged, he had thought it content with the company of the animals he kept: the rats and birds and rabbits and other living things he crossed paths with. To find himself able not only to tolerate a human sharing his space but to enjoy it was something of a revelation. Clearly the lonely child was still in him somewhere.

They moved along, walking down a deer-trail that led adjacent to the stream, and Jason continued to puzzle over his current predicament. He couldn't decide whether the possibility of this mutual harmony could have been found in any person, or whether it was something he should attribute specifically to Whitney.

In truth, he didn't think he would have allowed anyone to live as long outside of the very particular set of circumstances. The sole reason he hadn't killed her had been the resemblance he'd seen, or thought he'd seen. That was all. Without that, he couldn't imagine anything else that would have kept him from a killing blow. By that logic, only a female would have made it so long. By the following logic, only a female with her particular looks. After that, the variables grew too numerous to account for. She could have been less astute than she was; less cautious, refused to follow his nudges, continued to fight until he wound up killing her by accident. She could have been less brave. That was important, he thought. The precise combination of caution and the sheer will to survive that he hadn't been able to regard with anything but respect. No, Jason thought. The chances of any other person managing to make it this far were too slim to measure. The chances of him actually enjoying their company the way he did Whitney's were slimmer still.

And he did enjoy it. It did still occasionally unnerve him, if for nothing else than the sheer oddness of it. Yet he enjoyed her curiosity, her interest in the trappings of his patterned, solitary life. He liked the way she seemed so self-aware when she walked and spoke, rather then mindlessly chattering or stomping about. She had never barraged him with pleas or demands for explanation, of which he had heard plenty in his time. She never seemed to take for granted the earth beneath her – odd as that seemed, but he knew no other way to think of it. She seemed...present in a way he had never seen another person emulate before. Not hikers or campers or hunters, vacationer or forest ranger. She no longer seemed to resent being there as she had before. She watched and she listened as he watched and listened, though perhaps not for the same things. He found himself wanting to know more; found himself brimming with questions he had no means with which to ask. With the questions came a frustration that seemed almost inevitable now, because while there was nothing he could do to change it he still wanted to – which was not something he was familiar with. He didn't fight what was. It wasn't in his nature to do so – it made no _sense_ to do so. Yet here he was.

A rustle reached his ears, followed immediately by a sharp curse and a thud. He turned in time to see Whitney sliding several feet back down the slope, scrabbling for purchase against the dry dirt with her bound hands. The ground had risen beneath their feet, forming a shallow incline that had grown progressively less shallow the further they went that he only just noticed. He was already moving toward her when she righted herself, bracing his weight sideways against the pull of gravity as he reached to help her. The chain rattled as she gripped him, her hands almost comically small against his.

She winced as she levered herself upright, carefully extending and retracting her knee as if to shake out a pinch of pain. Had she hurt herself?

He pointed to the knee, asking with his eyes.

"It's fine," she said with an exhale harsh with annoyance, "just banged it going down."

He regarded her for a moment, not sure he believed her. She used the word _fine_ so often, and so often when he knew very well that she was _not_ the definition of the word in any way. He didn't much care for that, didn't understand why she seemed to feel the need to cover up pain or frustration or anger with this overly-mild descriptor.

While he might not be skilled at differentiating or defining the subtle intricacies, he was rather good at reading body language, and facial expression – it seemed – spoke just as loudly as did the rest of the body. He hadn't spent much time reading faces before, hadn't had the need to, and he couldn't be sure whether Whitney was no more or less expressive than most people, or whether she was individual that way. Whichever it was, he could tell there was much she buried, even if only within his presence. He didn't think it was out of any desire to hide from him specifically, but she was doing it all the same: repressing, concealing. Determined, perhaps, not to feel certain things. A coping mechanism of sorts, he guessed. He could understand that well enough, although he sometimes wondered how she didn't simply burst from all the things she didn't express. And he did hope she no longer felt afraid.

That was another thing entirely: this need to be as unthreatening as possible around her. Not days past he had been glad of her fear, and yet now...he didn't know quite what had changed.

He recalled the way she had talked to him about her love of books – the way she had shrugged off his lack of true reading prowess as simply a fact, not a weakness. She hadn't looked at him with pity or with scorn. She had offered up a failing of her own. Not that he recollected being all that fond of mathematics either, but that was beside the point. Then – to make a strange conversation stranger – she had gone and complimented his ability to survive. He hadn't known what to make of that. It had been a good thing, he knew that much, but he had felt oddly shy hearing it, shy and pleased and strangely comforted.

And he had laughed. _Laughed_ for the first time in...he had no way to know how long. So long that the doing of it had felt like turning a rusted bolt in his own throat; difficult, but good.

Whitney had been occupied brushing leaves and browned fir needles from her clothes, and when she looked up to find him watching she frowned, a small, fine crease forming between her dark brows.

"What?" She glanced down at herself, then back up at him.

Again he pointed to her knee, wanting to be sure. He couldn't have her walking on an injured leg and risk hurting it beyond the point of his capacity to treat.

She rolled her eyes skyward, as if imploring the birds in the trees overheard to intervene on her behalf – something he found as amusing as much as baffling. Then, sighing, she took a couple steps sideways up the slope: her stride smooth as she outpaced him a ways without any hitch or hint of strain.

"See?" she insisted with deliberate patience, "it's fine."

While convinced that she was unhurt, he was still not overly pleased with the situation. What if she fell again? What if next time the fall was worse? He'd seen the way she had clawed at the ground as she slid, trying to find purchase without the proper leverage to do so and knew that if he was going to lead her around in the woods on uneven ground he could not keep her hands bound the way they were. It was unnecessary, and it was cruel.

He was many things, this he well knew – but he would not be cruel.

Sliding his free hand into the inner pocket of his coat where he kept her keys he extracted the one for the manacles, gesturing for her hands.

He did his best not to reach for her without reason. He didn't know what it was about this that upset her, but sometimes when he reached she started like a rabbit, the whites of her eyes blowing wide and her pulse jumping in her throat. She seemed to understand that he didn't intend to hurt her – if not that he actively didn't wish to – yet every once in a while she seemed to revert back to the prey state from weeks ago, just for a moment, before the fear ebbed like the last remnants of a nightmare dissolving into wakefulness. The occurrences of this had become less and less with the passage of days, but he still felt the need to avoid both it and the sourness the sight of it left in his mouth. So when he held out his hand, he kept it there, inviting, waiting for her to close the distance by setting her wrist in his palm.

Confusion had deepened the furrow at her brow, giving her face an almost stern countenance – one that he could see being rather intimidating should she utilize it for the purposes of chastisement. "What are you doing?" Whitney asked as he slid back the cover to the lock and inserted the key, though he rather assumed the answer obvious as he loosened the manacle to free her right hand.

He closed the empty cuff about the length of chain so that it didn't dangle precariously and tucked the key away, miming with his arms that should she fall again she would be able to better use her hands to catch herself. Understanding dawned in her face, and he felt the small kernel of warmth in his chest that was beginning to become familiar in these moments of successful communication. Every time she correctly interpreted his wordless attempts to speak to her it was like being rewarded with tiny drops of sunlight.

Turning, he continued on, careful to keep slack on the chain as he did so.

They stopped at three more traps before he circled back around the lake. He made it a point to have her back under cover by the hottest part of the day simply because if she were to get overheated or sick, he would have no idea how to take care of her. She didn't seem to mind so much now that he ensured she got plenty of time to walk around.

"So I know I sort of asked already…" Whitney's voice arose behind him as he bent to pull the trapdoor open. "But, is there something you want, or want me to do? Not that I'm not happy to be alive, because I am. It's just—you can just nod yes or no and I can guess."

Her eyes tracked him as he stood, settling on his masked face as he shook his head.

"No. No there's nothing you want?" she clarified. The words came slowly, as though she herself were trying to sort out his answer rather than to ensure he understood.

If there was one thing he would happily admit to appreciating about his guest it was that she didn't treat him like he was slow simply because he couldn't speak or read well. He knew what she was asking. He knew what she wanted, and knew that he was only going to disappoint her.

He shook his head a second time, readying himself for the inevitable plea to be set free, and for the anger that would surely follow. He had all but admitted to having no real reason for keeping her. Yet he had no way to explain that to release her would be to break his vow, no way to explain that while the escape from this state of limbo she resided in could be found in her death, he could not bring himself to kill her. Even if he had all the words in the world and a means with which to use them, she would not have understood.

When he denied her the release that would, he knew, seem obvious, she would be angry. And Jason would not blame her for it.

Her eyelids swept down, veiling all expression with her lashes. She said nothing, merely held out her arms and allowed him to lower her into the tunnels.

For the very first time Jason found himself completely unable to read her.

With all their early interactions as a guide, this smooth, silent acceptance was utterly out of character. He didn't think she had truly made her peace with it, else why inquire as to what he might want from her, but she appeared to have accepted the reality enough to take the answer for what it was. Perhaps it had merely been to alleviate some worry she'd been holding on to – buried deep with all the rest of those buried things – though what she feared aside from pain or death evaded him completely. At the very least, he hoped she understood that she was safe with him.

He reaffixed her chain to the metal ring while Whitney picked up the book she was reading, thumbing to the page she had marked with a bit of twine liberated from the scrap pile. She seemed almost rigid, sitting too straight in her corner, as though a tight band was wrapped around her shoulders. She didn't seem angry, yet he found himself hovering for a moment or two longer than necessary. What exactly he thought to accomplish he had no idea. The outcome of her question wasn't going to change, and there was nothing else he could do. It still felt wrong to simply...leave her. Not that he was leaving the tunnel yet as he had things to do first, but the odd, unfinished feeling remained. After another moment – wherein she didn't so much as glance up from her book – he turned, feeling awkward, and crossed to the workbench and the grinding wheel beyond it.

Whitney didn't care for the sound of the grinding wheel. It was a discovery he had made a few mornings ago when he'd set to sharpening his modest collection of blades.

The wheel itself lived in the alcove across the chamber, tucked away, but still within clear view of her corner, which was the only reason he had noticed her grimace mid-work on the machete. She'd had her hands clamped over her ears as though they hurt, elbows tucked tight to her middle. Jason had stopped immediately, concerned, only for her to flap a placating hand at him. Carry on; she had seemed to say, before hunkering down again to endure the sound. He had, but he'd kept a wary eye on her throughout and had finished only the one weapon before stopping. He had to finish the rest – had planned to do so today after their walk. But just now he found himself reluctant, knowing as he did that the piercing grinding noise would only distress her on top of the disappointment he had likely already caused.

For a moment he hesitated, the indecision crawling like ants across his back. To be indecisive to the point of inaction...if he had ever been in such a state before it could only have been in childhood. He did not hesitate. He did not dither back and forth. He considered his options once, thoroughly, and he made a choice. He was half a second away from settling himself at the wheel just to make a point, but ultimately thought better of it. Hadn't he just decided that he would not be cruel? Besides, there were other ways to sharpen blades. None so quick or efficient, but what did that really matter when he had time in abundance.

He changed course, reaching behind the wheel to rifle about in the clutter for the tool he wanted. If all else failed he could search the kitchen in the camp lodge for a sharpener, but he was almost certain there was a whetstone down there somewhere...

Just as his hand closed about the block of ceramic, he noticed the sound. Or, rather, the lack thereof.

Whitney was a quick reader. Since having presented her with the books he had become accustomed to the dry, muted sound of turning pages. There was usually a distinct rhythm to it, yet he had not once heard the rasp of fingertips to paper. Suddenly he was second-guessing himself. She _had_ been holding a book, hadn't she?

He circled back around to check, finding that she was, indeed, holding a book in one hand. But she wasn't looking at it. She had leaned slightly forward to stare at the rat perched at the wooden edge of her crate table.

He was moving toward her before he realized it, intent on shooing the little beast away and about its own business. While she didn't appear to actively _dislike_ them, she didn't seem to prefer them around her either. He didn't find that odd, for all that he rather liked them he did remember his mother setting out poison and had gathered that they didn't usually belong in proper dwelling places with humans. It was why he didn't feel like a bully guiding them away from her corner, and why he had begun distributing the food he brought them farther down the tunnels. Most of them had shifted their scrounging ground accordingly a few more particularly adventurous ones still came poking around down here. Yet he had only taken a step when he paused, reconsidering.

The look on Whitney's face was not one of aversion or surprise, but one of considering interest. She looked curious and...intrigued, if that was possible. She was nearly nose-to-nose with the creature, an inch or so separating her face from the tiny head extended outward as if to sniff at her. Slowly she set her book down upon her lap, pages splayed open over one thigh. Next she reached into the open bag of trail mix he had brought her the day before, producing a halved peanut, which she offered to the rat in cautious invitation.

Seizing the nut, the rat gobbled it down in record time – as though it were starved and wild rather than sleek and drawing near to fat – before it began sniffing about for more. Shameless little beggar.

Rather than offer more food, however, Whitney lifted her cupped hands to the edge of the crate and smiled widely when the rat skittered eagerly into them.

He watched, perplexed, as she cuddled the rodent to her chest like she might have a teddy bear. She had seemed so uneasy with them around before...but now she was smiling, stroking the rat's soft brown fur as it investigated her hand for more peanuts.

Laughter rose, warm and bursting in the air like song, and it took him far longer than it should have to recognize that it had come from her, and he stared – fascinated. She was _laughing._ With her nose scrunched up and her eyes tightly closed in her mirth, as the sound came pouring out of her. The rat had scurried up her arm, he realized, to her shoulder and was rooting about in her hair – and still she laughed as though nothing in the world had ever been funnier. He couldn't remember the last time someone had laughed in his presence. Not while they were aware of him. It was...nice. Pleasant. He didn't know the word for it.

He moved closer, the better to see, and caught the flash of teeth from between her parted lips; straight and very white, even and small.

Her eyes opened, gleaming with warm humor as she cocked her head slightly to allow the rodent to snuffle about her ear. "Clearly," she said on a shallow snort of amusement, "I've made a friend."

He felt his own mouth moving, turning up at the corners in an echoing smile she wouldn't see. It seemed as if the tension that had been in her - whether anger or frustration, disappointment or something else – were outweighed by this turn of events. He wasn't sure what had changed beyond the making of said small rodent friend, but he would take it and gladly. He hadn't liked feeling as though he had disappointed her that way, and had liked feeling anything other than indifferent about it even less.

"You feed them, don't you?"

It was a question, but even as he nodded he suspected that she already knew the answer.

"I had a feeling," she said on a snicker, hunching her shoulders as the rat skittered across to her other shoulder, little claws no doubt digging tiny pinpricks through her shirt. "If this one is anything to measure by, they're way too friendly to be wild anymore. Aren't you?"

She was speaking to the rat. He knew this, and yet the way his brain reacted was as though she had just paid him some kind of compliment. Another drop of that sunlight warmth sank into him for no reason whatsoever, bleeding outward from the point of impact to dissolve into surrounding tissue and bone. He felt an odd urge to guard against it, to brace himself in case that warmth somehow knock his feet out from beneath him. He didn't understand it – neither the warmth itself nor this instinctively defensive response to it – but as it was simply one thing among many he didn't understand at this point, he managed to shrug it off.

Gently untangling the rodent from where it had burrowed into her hair Whitney returned it to the floor, offering another piece of peanut as a consolation prize. It scampered off in victory, nut held fast between its teeth, to disappear into the noon shadows.

She was still alight with the remnants of her smile when she looked up again, and he was pleased when it didn't subside into the shadowy, not-quite-frown of before when her gaze landed on him.

He glanced hurriedly down, feeling suddenly nervous at the prospect of eye-contact and half surprised to see the whetstone there, cupped in his palm.

"What's that?"

Slipping the hunting knife from his belt he mimed moving it over the stone in answer.

"Oh, not the wheel?"

Firmly he shook his head, stepping around the corner of the worktable, shoving aside a box of empty mason jars to clear a flat space, and setting out the blades in need of attention: the hunting knife, a small hatchet, two folding utility knives, and the boning knife he'd pilfered from the camp kitchens. He could feel her eyes on him, knew they widened as he produced weapon after weapon, but far more curious now then fearful. In fact, as he'd shown her what he intended to do, it had been the first time she had not visibly flinched when he touched one of his blades. With a foot he dragged the stool from where it waited beneath the table and sat, setting one side of the hatchet to the stone and drawing it smoothly across the grain.

There was still a sound: a scraping rasp of steel to ceramic, but it was far quieter than the wheel and significantly more pleasant.

He had forgotten how much control using the whetstone offered him, how soothing the smooth repetitive motions could be in relation to the rapid work of the wheel. Apparently somewhere along the way the convenience and speed had become habit, grown more important than the craft – than the time spent caring for the very same blades that always served him so well. Yet for what purpose? There was no reason for it, he never felt the press of time enough to warrant such efforts to save it and pile it up for future, more important use. He vowed there and then not to use the wheel unless there was a real need to.

" _Beyond a bare, weather-worn wall, about a hundred paces from the spot where the two friends sat..._ "

Whitney's voice rose above the soft scrapes and he paused, turning to study at her. He stared, puzzled, understanding the words she spoke but not their context – until he realized with a jolt of surprise that she was reading aloud from the book.

 _"...looking and listening as they drank their wine, was the village of the Catalans."_ She glanced up, seemingly noticing that he'd stopped working. "Sorry, I can stop—"

Hurriedly he shook his head and she lowered her eyes back to the open book.

" _Long ago this mysterious colony quitted Spain, and settled on the tongue of land on which it is to this day._ "

For a moment he simply listened to the soft inflection of her voice as within moments she spoke more words consecutively than she had over the course of two weeks. He hadn't really heard enough of it to tell before, but now he could determine that it was a nice voice. So often when he did hear speaking it was too loud and coarse, or shrill. But hers was none of these things. Hers was lower in register and slightly husky, though he couldn't tell whether this was a natural component of how she talked or a result of not having spoken so much for a while. It was thicker, almost...golden. Could sound be golden?

It wasn't really like when he had been little, he wasn't tucked in bed with his bear in his blue and red robot pajamas. Yet it managed to inspire a gentle sense of nostalgia all the same. He listened as he worked on one blade after another, working perhaps a little more slowly than he might have normally. When he was done, he sat and listened until she tired, closing the covers of the book with a quiet snap and reaching for her water.

He got up then to go about his regular routine while she rested, cradling a delicate sliver of hope that she might read more later.

~/~

 **Day 18**

It was upon waking early in the morning that she discovered the flowers left on her crate sometime in the night.

Whitney reached automatically, her fingers curling around the delicate stems, careful not to crush the teardrop leaves when she picked them up to look more closely. They were from a blackberry vine, two clusters of tiny pinkish-white blooms. She had come across some blackberries on their walk yesterday, and while she had spent a few precious moments exploring them, searching fir early berries and sticking her nose into the little flowers to breathe in the faint sugary fragrance they put off, she hadn't picked any. Yet even if she had they would surely have wilted by now, and these were fresh as though they had just been plucked. Probably because they had.

He had brought her flowers?

Her first response to this idea was one of dumbfounded confusion, because she couldn't for the life of her imagine what would make him think to...but then she realized. It was no different than the gift of books: a gesture intended to make the space more comfortable, more home-like. He had seen her paying attention to them, assumed she liked them, and brought her some to keep during the dark hours she was stuck down here.

It was strange, he seemed not only to acknowledge that she was a living thing but to value that now that she no longer fell into the category of every other person that set foot on the camp property. He seemed to truly want her to be happy, or at least content enough to be getting along with. She was no longer sure it mattered why she was alive. Why he wasn't going to hurt her. She was, and he wasn't. That should be enough. But it would have been a lie to pretend she wasn't curious.

She hadn't considered before that maybe there was no reason behind why he kept her; that the answer to the question that had plagued her nonstop for days was something he didn't have. But she had asked if he wanted her for something, and his answering no had been perfectly clear.

At first it had utterly confounded her – _infuriated_ her – for all of five minutes before the anger slipped away from her like sand between her fingers. She simply couldn't hold on to it, because it didn't seem right to. She might be working purely on conjecture, but she was almost entirely convinced now that Jason was nowhere near as complicated as she had once thought him to be – no more so than any other person was. His life had been straightforward, if twisted by trauma and isolation, and she had unsettled it. Not knowing how to respond to that, he was reacting like anyone would in such circumstances: figuring it out as he went. It wasn't that he had decided this was to be her life now. He hadn't thought that far ahead, just as he hadn't planned to keep her in the first place. No, he was simply doing his best to deal with a situation he had created for himself.

Even if he had no idea what to do with her, she could understand the drive to keep her alive and out of a state of mental and physical stress – if for no other reason than so she wouldn't cause trouble. But she could not wrap her head around what would cause him to consciously try to make her _happy_. Happy was different than ok. Significantly so.

Pressing her nose to the flowers Whitney inhaled.

Mike had brought her red roses once for Valentine's Day – flowers she didn't much like on a holiday she disdained. Within the cultural context within which they had been raised, to do it had made sense to her; performing in a way he thought was expected of him for someone he liked. She was positive that Jason didn't like her, in that or any other way. Not that he _dis_ liked her. If he disliked her she would likely be dead. But he didn't know her enough to like her, and even if he did, he didn't have the contextual baseline or experience to think to present her with things in order to show it. Yet a day or so ago he had brought her a smooth, round stone which fit in the palm of her hand and sparkled opalescent at the touch of light. And just yesterday he had brought her a bottle; a little green glass one which tapered with a narrow neck like a miniature soda bottle. Now she tucked the flowers inside the bottle like a tiny bouquet in a perfectly tiny vase, but very much doubted he had planned it that way. More likely he had simply thought the bottle interesting to look at and brought back for her, much like the stone.

That particular thought brought her pause. There was something almost youthfully innocent about him picking something up and going to the effort to carry it all the way back – possibly across the entire grounds – to give it to her. All because it was interesting or pretty.

Was he... _could_ he be lonely? He had been out here alone since he had been a little boy – however long that had been. _Alone_. With no mother, no friends, no one to talk to him or play with him, no one to teach him how to wash his clothes, or to share interesting bottles with. Maybe he hadn't even known that he was until he'd already made the decision to spare her for other reasons and discovered it by accident. Maybe he still didn't know. Maybe through their mutual efforts to make due with their current interwoven realities he had begun to discover the concept of companionship. Still, whether any of these things were true, it wasn't necessary to like someone in order for them to satisfy a human need for company.

Was it?

Her eyes fell on the book resting flat next to the little bottle, waiting to be picked up.

She couldn't really remember what had inspired her to start reading aloud that afternoon. She only remembered the compulsion to do so, like some soft nudge at the back of her mind coaxing her to do it. The pragmatist in her was dead-set on calling it survival: knowing as she did that the human soul withered and dried up like an uneaten apple when left to solitude. She wasn't like him, the pragmatist insisted, unaccustomed to isolation and therefore more susceptible to suffering from it. But neither of those things were true. He _had_ suffered from his isolation. There was no question in her mind that this was fact as plain and clear as her own heartbeat. And she hadn't done it out of some need to see to her own welfare. She hadn't _needed_ to at all. She had wanted to, and there was a difference.

What was more, he had seemed to like listening. When he had finished sharpening the not unimpressive array of deadly metal things he had dragged out the dusty, cobwebbed stool produced from beneath the table so he could sit near and absorb the words she read. She had been reading aloud a little bit each day since after their morning walks, while he puttered around in the cavern room doing whatever it was he did down there. Sometimes he didn't do anything other than sit and listen.

How much or how little he understood she couldn't be sure. Amidst the pantheon of classical literature Dumas wasn't the most difficult, though complex and meaty, yet from what she could see Jason had no trouble following along, even though she brought him in a good ways into the book. She had read The Count of Monte Cristo before for a report and remembered liking it well enough. This second time around, however, she found she was enjoying it much more; and while certainly maturity, expanded vocabulary, and general better understanding of how the world work had plenty to do with that, a great deal of it came from the rapt attention of her audience. Even while set in permanent shadows by the mask she could see the glitter of his eyes from beneath and would have bet good money that they would widen at times of tension and peril, narrow at a vicious turn, and was almost amused by how she could have thought him an unfeeling gargoyle incapable of anything but rage.

Whitney paused, stilling mid-motion as she turned to add another tally to her growing collection on the wall, somewhat disturbed by the course her thoughts had taken.

Was she bonding with her captor? Was that what was happening here?

She ran her fingers along the grooves she had methodically scratched into the stone – one for every morning she woke down here. Three uneven groups of five, plus two. Two that would become closer to another group after she added today's tally, making eighteen in total.

Eighteen days. More than half a month. Not an insignificant amount of time spent in the company of only one other person.

Most scientific communities suggested Stockholm Syndrome to be purely a mechanism of survival or of manipulation, especially where women were concerned. Yet it had been a while since she had truly felt that her life was in danger. Whether she had continued to fight him, whether she had continued to run every time she got even a sliver of a chance, whether she did either of those things now wouldn't change the fact that he had decided not to hurt her. He didn't give the impression of someone prone to indecision or wavering once those decisions were made. Was it still Stockholm Syndrome if she felt no concern for her continued survival or wellbeing? Was it still if she wasn't being gaslit into her sympathies? She had a good idea what most people would say. Yes. Absolutely. Without a doubt. Any form of empathy directed toward Jason – or really anything other than fear or hatred – could be nothing else. And yet...

It wasn't as if these little things had the power to erase the bad he had done: seeing to her needs did not override that he had restrained and chained her down here. Bringing her flowers did not erase murder.

If he had turned out to be the twisted serial killer she had initially thought, then she would hate him still. But if that had been the case there would have been no care, no kindness. She would also likely be dead or else wishing she was. Psychopaths were not complex the way other people were in that they tended not to struggle with the moral scale between right and wrong, or recognize the core difference between living and non-living things. Jason, however, did. Oh, he was a serial killer. That she could neither deny nor condone. Yet if he was twisted it was only by his less than conventional upbringing, and that he could not control. Did believing this make her brain-addled, was it an indication that her mind was not her own? She didn't think so, but if either of these things were true...would she?

When Jason came down, setting her breakfast in front of her like some sideways parody of a waiter, he paused briefly before straightening, touching the fragile petals of the little flowers with an incredible gentle brush of fingertips. And when she offered a quiet murmur of thanks, she couldn't tell if there was something shy in the way he looked away and allowed her to eat, or whether she was projecting like the loon she apparently was.

~/~

That morning's walk was longer than usual. One trap had been completely destroyed overnight by a bear or mountain lion, and caught in another they had discovered a fox far past the point of fear and seemingly resigned to its fate which had to be carefully untangled from the wire it had managed to hobble itself with. By the time Jason directed them back it was well past noon.

They emerged beside the lake, not far from where the dock sat like a piece of far too neat and even driftwood. A chill shuddered down his spine at the sight of it, the aversion as cloying and bitter to taste as the medicines forced down his throat when he was sick as a child. He didn't hate the lake itself, thing of nature that it was, though he had no desire to be any nearer to it than he absolutely must. The lake was neutral. But the dock was another story. The dock was neither natural nor neutral, and he _loathed_ it with a ferocity that hurt. Every time he looked at it was to feel his lungs filling, his chest tight and his airway caving in like a tunnel of rock.

Automatically he averted his gaze and made to continue on, his stride eating up large swaths of ground as he walked. When he felt the resistance of the chain wrapped loose about his hand, he cringed and immediately slowed, assuming he had been walking too fast for Whitney to keep up. She was taller than most of the girls he had seen, but she was still significantly smaller than he. The resistance remained and he twisted to look, finding her stock still, her arm extended slack in front of her where the chain pulled taut between them.

Her face was turned to the water, gilded gold by the soft sunlight falling in streams down around them through the fringe of trees. She must have been sleeping more soundly lately, for the shadowy half-moons under her eyes had nearly vanished. Her cheeks no longer had that hint of hollowness, nor her skin the strange, near-gray pallor. She looked better. She looked...different.

He remembered liking girls in that shy, clumsy way of children. They had been pretty and soft, and even if they hadn't liked him – or being anywhere near him – he had kept his distance and done his admiring from afar. At some point after he had stopped seeing them as girls, or boys – men or women. Their faces and forms and screams had dissolved into a semi-steady fluctuation of sound and stillness, silence and motion, and death.

In the beginning Whitney had been just one more screaming, trembling human stinking of fear. Had it not been for her initial resemblance to a dead woman, she, too, would have joined the masses, found her place of permanence in this forest of bones.

It shouldn't be different, after all she had been an invader just like the others: a directive, a task in need of dispatching. No different than the ones that had killed him – killed his mother. But it _was_ different.

 _Why_ was it different?

The thought disturbed him now – the idea of this pretty, soft girl being relegated to nothing more than meat at the end of his blade. And she was pretty, though he wasn't sure his judgment was to be trusted since he knew nothing of what was considered beautiful to anyone but himself. Her hair was up today, tied there with another scrap of twine, and he found himself absorbing details he had never really noticed before. Things like the freckles sprinkled across her nose and cheeks like nutmeg dusted on Christmastime eggnog, the subtle arch at the bridge of her nose, the little creases at the corners of her mouth.

Her lips parted as if to speak, but at first no sound emerged, as though to form words had become a chore difficult to begin.

"Could I stay out here for a bit?" she asked softly.

Jason blinked. It had never occurred to him that she would want to stay outside where it was hot but he supposed it wasn't that strange, considering how much she seemed to enjoy being there. He risked a glance, following her stare just for a split instant before looking back at her, and noticed that her eyes had softened in a peculiar way he hadn't seen before. For just a moment sitting there by the lakeside, the sunset burnishing her hair until it seemed to burn, she looked at home.

He took a second glance, this time allowing it to linger long enough to see the way the light made the surface glitter like broken glass. No. No, more like stars. Like stars that burst and shattered and danced across the mirror-bright surface. She wanted...to look at the water?

Interpreting his inaction as either confusion or denial, she pointed back to the edge of trees they had come from, indicating the shade. "You don't have to stay if you have things to do. You can lock the chain to a tree and I'll just hang out here."

He didn't completely understand the phrase she used – _hang out_. The words stuck together that way had no meaning to him, but he had heard it before and gathered it to mean something along the lines of not doing much of anything. She was looking at him in an altogether new way, one that bore an incredible resemblance to pleading, yet somehow didn't cause the usual distaste the sight of pleading brought him. He was still so unaccustomed to another person asking him for something other than to spare their lives.

She wasn't wrong; he could very easily wrap the length of chain about a tree and tether her there. Yet he felt strangely uninclined to do so, and not simply because he couldn't think of anything pressing that required his attention.

For a moment he hesitated, wavering and uncertain what to do, before finally gesturing vaguely to the nearest tree. She clearly thought he intended to do as she asked and chain her in place for she went eagerly, plopping down in the grass at the base of the trunk like a satisfied child and peered expectantly up at him. When he surprised her by instead lowering himself to sit a few careful feet from her, her smile was so bright and warm that for a moment he felt blinded. An answering warmth sparked inside him, a match struck to produce a tiny flame that grew to a faint flicker somewhere deep in his brain.

Was she happier that he had chosen to stay than she would have been had he left?

He looked down, feeling clumsy and too-large next to her slender smallness. Yet if he were honest with himself – and if he listened to that honesty – he would have known that even in spite of this, he rather liked how it felt to be there.

~/~

For a man with a face enclosed within a fiberglass mask, Jason was incredibly adept at conveying emotion when he chose to. But the skill was almost more pronounced when he chose _not_ to.

Whitney had not expected him to stay with her. She had expected him to wind the chain about his chosen tree, padlock it securely in place, and go about it business – if he deigned to grant her request at all. His choice to join her had surprised the ever-loving wits out of her. She had been weirdly pleased at first, as though he had somehow stated the importance of her contentment, when it was more likely that he simply didn't have anything better to do. Or else didn't trust her not to half-strangle herself like the fox regardless of whether her doing so was in any way related to attempting an escape. Not an entirely unfounded worry, she admitted to herself. Yet it was made very quickly apparent that whatever his reasons for staying, something had made him uncomfortable.

It took her some time to identify what it was she was picking up on. She had no base for comparison since, from the beginning, any form of tension he had shown had been almost exclusively due to suspicion or concern, and he had always retained the ever-present underlying sense of calm discipline. This was jittery and tight: wavering like something perched at the very edge of a shelf and threatening to tip. To shatter.

The ends of his jacket sleeves were tatters, shredded and studded with patchy holes. It had been too short for him in the arms to begin with, for even what remained of the original hems did not reach his thick wrists. Nor did the shirt beneath it. He was plucking at the tears, the fingers of his empty hand tracing the patterns of wear over and over as he stared fixedly out at the water. It was such an obviously nervous thing that it pulled at every squishy, nurturing part of her. She just barely curbed the reflex to reach for his hand to give him something to cling to...

The _water._

It hit her like a baseball bat to the back of the head, turning the glint of the noon light on the lake to dizzy sunbursts at the backs of her eyes. _Of course_ he was uncomfortable. He was staring in the face of his own trauma.

"Did you really drown?"

The words were out of her mouth before she had a chance to fully hear them in her head, and she cringed, wishing she could swallow her stupid tongue because holy freaking _shit_ that had been rude.

"You don't," she hastened to add, "you don't have to answer that…"

When he nodded it was faint, as if absent and faraway – more instinctive than conscious. But it had clearly been a nod. Yes.

Yes, he had drowned.

It was unnecessary to clarify details; Whitney could tell just by his posture that he hadn't simply floundered about and choked on some water to emerge a moment later, scared, but otherwise all right. He had drowned. He had _died._

She felt her chest tighten, and if it had been possible to radiate sympathy she would have. She couldn't imagine what such a thing would feel like, to try to breathe and find her lungs filling with water instead of air, sinking like a stone to the bottom. Her hands clenched reflexively against the urge to touch him – the second in as many minutes – to lay her palm against his elbow, his shoulder, to offer comfort. As if it would have accomplished anything. She didn't have a clear view of his eyes enough to see it, but she thought she could feel the memory surging through him, through mind and muscle. She wouldn't have been surprised had his jaw ticked behind the mask, the tension that coiled along his arms and up his shoulders and neck was so starkly noticeable.

Watching him, she was struck by the sudden realization that the tight fear he exuded was too much, too sharp, to fit having almost died years ago. Traumatic as that was. It had never been confirmed whether he had fallen into the lake or been pushed, but watching him now, she thought she knew which it had been.

She almost didn't want to ask – didn't want to know. Because if her suspicion was right then it would mean...well, she wasn't sure what it would mean. But the question burned in her, as though it would eat its way out like an acid if she didn't give it breath, to the point where its leaving her was not so much a relief as it was the righting of an imbalance.

"You didn't fall, did you?"

For a moment he was perfectly still, as though he had needed to catch his breath. She might have assumed he hadn't heard her, mousy as her words had been. But he had. When he turned his face toward her, it was only for a second; yet there was so much in that one brief flash of a look that she finally understood what was meant by the phrase _a speaking glance._ For the space of a second he ceased to be the Jason she had thought she'd known and became instead a person haunted by a life flung out of their control, choices they had not made. By sadness, and loneliness. And _pain._ She knew the answer without the shake of his head, stiff and minuscule, but the sight of it – the way his wide shoulders hunched ever so slightly inward in stark vulnerability before he corrected it with a forceful lurch – made her stomach churn with a noxious mix of horror and helpless fury.

She didn't need to ask how, didn't need him to tell her. She could imagine well enough. The stories had plenty to say about the whys behind Pamela Voorhees' descent into madness, the grief and rage that had driven her to murder. The counselors hadn't been watching. They hadn't been paying attention, and her son had drowned. And if that was true, which Whitney honestly couldn't find it in herself to doubt, then who would have helped Jason not fall into the water?

The campers, of course. The other children; cruel in that they retained all the savagery of human nature and not yet enough adult logic and learning to think around it. Cruel enough to kill, even if by accident. And, in their youthful ignorance, perhaps even on purpose.

"I'm sorry." Her voice broke, and she had to swallow thickly in order to bypass the sensation of a fist lodged in her windpipe, squeezing fiercely from the inside. "They shouldn't...that shouldn't have happened. And—"

Again her question seemed to choke her, clotting in the back of her throat as though it were clinging there with tiny, white-knuckled hands to prevent itself from being unleashed. But she had to ask. She had to know.

"—your mother...?"

He moved with the jarring abruptness of breaking bone, his head snapping around to look at her fully for the first time since sitting beside her.

His eyes were ever so slightly lopsided, the left higher than the right and by far the more expressive. She wasn't entirely sure whether he could use the right eye, somewhat sunken in and paler as it was. It had gone entirely covered by cloth for those first several weeks, to the point where she had begun to wonder whether he even had two eyes. Perhaps it was simply weaker than the other, more sensitive to light or motion. Not that it hindered him either way. He was still perfectly lethal in physicality and in his ability to deliver a look so sharp that she swore she felt the sting of it. She might have flinched but for the sheer willpower it took not to.

It was purely defensive; that look. She had prodded a wound still tender, if no longer bleeding, and she deserved the swipe.

He stared at her as if unsure whether the mention had been viciously meant or not, but after a few breaths he seemed to realize that she had not intended to rub the loss in his face, or anything equally nasty. That the question was genuine. The burgeoning threads of anger unwound themselves, easing from the stranglehold around his grief.

His empty hand rose, tentative and slow, and she could see the tremor in it, though it was very faint. He lifted it to his neck, where he hesitated, as if he worried what her reaction might be – or perhaps simply because he needed the time to bolster the courage it took to continue. She heard him draw in a breath, saw his great chest rise and fill with it, before he drew his index finger across his throat in a gesture impossible to misconstrue. A shudder worked its way down her spine in the way a musician might work through a tuning scale; one note – one vertebrae – at a time. Yet he hadn't finished. His arm extended outward, pointing to a spot on the lakeshore not far from the dock's edge where the dirt turned gritty and rocky and mixed with sand. _There,_ it seemed to say, _right there._ There is the place where everything ended.

The trembling in his hand had increased, and he dropped it to the grass at his other side. Not, she thought, to hide it from her as if in shame, but rather as a grounding – a source of connection to something stable and familiar. Gripping reality the only way he knew how. Once again she found herself seeing hints of the little boy he had been, scared and hurting and abandoned and not understanding what he had done to deserve it.

 _I'm so sorry._

The words hovered on her tongue, unsaid. She kept them there, somehow loath to put them to voice when they were, at their core, so meaningless when all was said and done. At best, they were an empty platitude. At worst, they were the same.

Maybe she had been wrong before. Maybe some suffering did deserve retribution in answer. Perhaps not murder...but she wasn't the one sitting yards away from the place where her only tie to love had been ripped away from her, and she was no longer sure she had the right to condemn his actions. She might have thought only to go after those with a direct hand in what had happened – but that was her logic, not his. Judging based on what he had seen people were synonymous with suffering. They went against nature; they were needless, pointless, and cruel.

Aside from that awful first night, he had been completely nonviolent. Even when restraining her there had been less true violence in him than there was latent beneath the surface of every other man she had known. That combined with his rather obvious distaste for causing any kind of suffering to even the smallest of creatures, painted a rather different picture from the monster she had assumed him to be. Maybe it was naive of her to think it, but Whitney rather thought he might have forgiven the treatment to himself, even with the example Pamela had left him, mad as she had been in her grief. He might never have become this, if only they hadn't killed her. But they had. Whether or not they'd had a choice was beside the point. They had, and her death at their hands had been the linchpin, the breaking straw, the final crack to already fragile glass.

Monster? Perhaps, but also victim. No child deserved to go through what he had faced, but what he did was a direct result of it; acting from a foundation of fear and hurt as much as anger. He didn't want to kill. What he wanted was to be left alone, but people kept coming into his space; kept bringing their noise and their trash and desecrated the land he cared for probably for the memory of what he'd lost as much as for its own sake. She had been no different. She had been as much responsible for the disturbance Mike's friends had caused, regardless of whether or not she had liked them.

Something fluttered at the back of her mind, weak but urgent, a butterfly struggling to catch the air with its wings. She remembered candles – layer upon layer of them – wax sediment building into structure the opposite of how water had beaten away at rock to form the Grand Canyon, a string of battery-powered lights strung with painstaking care over the frame of a mildew-painted shower curtain that had once been clear. Lights like those at the alter of a church at Christmas mass, guarding the hole torn into the bathroom wall. A shrine, yes. But not the kind they had thought. The shrunken, disembodied head within had not been some horrific trophy of death but rather the only piece of her he'd been able to carry back with him, to the only grave he had been able to provide. It had been a memorial, a place of memory and grief. And they had done far worse than simply disturb it.

Whitney's inhale twisted in her chest like a knife. No wonder there had been such rage in him. Looking back on it now, knowing this...everything made sense. _Everything._ From the way he had pulled Mike down through the floor, not caring if it must be in pieces, to the way he had chased after her – dispatching Richie so rapidly as though simply to be done with it, freeing him to move on to the far more important kill. Even to the way he had stopped when he'd seen her face.

On pure physical reflex her hand lifted, pressing to the stitch below her sternum where it felt like her rib cage would crack open. The chain rattled sharply, which seemed to break whatever awful spell of memory had taken hold of Jason, for her turned to her suddenly, his good eye crinkling with unspoken question when he saw the look of horror she wore. She was staring at him, but she could see only the rough outline, a dark mountainous shape next to her when seen through the screen of unshed tears.

"I'm sorry," she wheezed, each word feeling like a weight shoved through a space much too narrow for it. He tilted his head at her, signalling that he didn't follow. "We came barging into your space, into your home, touched your things..." The locket hung heavy around her neck as though it had become stone. "We shouldn't have done it. I'm so sorry."

The apology spilled from her, repeating on a painful loop like the skip of a record. _I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry._ Words just as useless as the one's left unsaid. But these were different. She had had no control over the actions of those others before her little group. She'd had no control over Mike, either. But she had been in control of _herself._ She could have chosen not to follow him, and so she apologized for the part she had played – the trespass, the theft, the desecration – all the while thinking, somewhat hysterically, that she wouldn't really blame him if he decided to kill her after all. Soon enough tears followed, and she averted her gaze, ashamed and feeling oddly vulnerable as they streamed hot and silent down her cheeks, thankfully with no embarrassing gut-emptying sobs to accompany them.

Jason, of course, said nothing. Nor did he move. He simply stared solemnly back at her, with nothing to give away what he might have been thinking or feeling beneath. He was motionless as she cried, sniffling quietly into the back of her hand. Motionless as crying gave way to heavy, exhausted silence.

When he rose, Whitney followed without complaint, no longer wanting to linger by the water – the beauty of it stained over not unlike tarnished silver. She followed him back to the house, barely aware when his hands closed around her ribs to lower her back down or when her own body folded into her little corner. She felt hollowed-out, scraped down inside like a melon or a pumpkin, bone-weary, and _sad_. If Jason's hands trembled somewhat when situating her chain, if he left somewhat more swiftly than he usually did, she didn't notice. Not until long minutes ticked by and her brain finally caught up and she realized that of course her saying it must have upset him.

She felt awful, guilt a rancid coating in her mouth. Guilt for the things that had happened to the little boy he had once been, guilt for having played a part in the destruction of something so unquestioningly important to him. Guilt for being alive when the rest of them weren't. Guilt and shame and exhaustion turning her marrow to cement and dragging her down.

Leaning heavily against the wall, her eyes strayed once again to the collection of tally marks, noticing that in the midst of fretting over whether or not she was brain-sick she had forgotten to add one for today.

Though it felt like raising a weight far beyond that of just her arms and a bit of metal, she lifted her hands to etch the eighteenth mark into the rock when the chain jostled. The padlock tipped, falling into the crate of books with a quiet thud, the chain slithering from where it had been looped through the ring in the wall to coil upon the mattress like a snake of metallic links...and she was free.

* * *

 **NOTES:**

Hooray, finally!

Just a couple notes today because I am tired and stressed as all get-out. First and foremost: credit for the pieces from "The Count of Monte Cristo" goes to Alexandre Dumas.

This chapter feels very exposition-heavy to me, but honestly this whole story is exposition-heavy, and that's just the nature of it when one of your leads doesn't speak and the other isn't chatty. That said, I like this one purely for the self-fan service and some of the things explored within. I'll just leave it at that.

Lastly, and very important: please keep in mind that I have a job, other responsibilities, and other things going on in my life. I understand that it's hard to wait for updates, and I am beyond touched that there are those of you who are invested in this story enough to follow it and to ask for more. I promise that I will always update as soon as I possibly can. In return I ask that you do not pester me about the time it takes. I will not speak for other authors, but all this will accomplish is to frustrate me and increase stress that I don't need, thereby causing me to take longer. Believe me, I am PAINFULLY aware of how long it has been, and am working as fast as I can because I want to get content out. At the same time, I will not rush to get another chapter done if it isn't the best I feel it can be. I'm sorry that this means some waits are longer than others, but this is not something I can control. Please be patient.

I love you all so much.

Until next time!


	8. Shadow on the Run

**CHAPTER 8  
** Shadow on the Run

~/13/~

" _Richie's gonna call bullshit—!"  
_

" _Bullshit!"  
_

" _Richie's called bullshit!"_

 _While Whitney had long since tuned out the mix of aimless chatter and competitively blatant insults, the sudden caustic crowing of the two boys snagged her from her meditative study of the dry grass underfoot. And she meant that – boys, specifically, not young men. Not men at all. Not when they acted as though they were still fresh out of high school._

 _She had only been in the company of these people for half a day and she was already exhausted. Not that she should have expected any different, still she was left trying to remember why she was there in the first place._

" _Hey," Mike's voice – now familiar to the point of mere tonal recognition – made her start. Her chin jerked up half by reflex, though she hoped her eyes were clear when she looked at him. "Where are you right now?"_

 _The smile was quick to form, too bright with far too much teeth, not that he noticed. "I'm here," she insisted, looping her arm loosely through his, which was something of a task while walking. "Right in the middle of nowhere."_

 _There was something caustic in her remark which broached the realm of even the most sarcastic humor. He didn't notice that, either. He had just wanted affirmation, attention, regardless of what it cost her. Not that it was maliciously intended, but sometimes Mike had no more sensitivity than the fresh collage frat boys his friends seemed to wish they still were._

 _For what had to have been the tenth time since that morning Whitney wondered why she was still with him. She knew why – it was an absolute even split between noble suffering and emotional selfishness. On the one hand, she very typically didn't want to pull the trigger for all the cringey reasons imaginable – she didn't want to be mean, didn't want to disappoint him, didn't want to fight, reasons ad nauseam – even at the cost of her own wellbeing. On the other hand, she also wanted any shred of emotional support she could scrounge for herself, even if it meant stringing on a dying relationship. Selfish, absolutely. But right now it was all she had._

 _She was here right now in the middle of nowhere because she had promised her mom she would get out of the house – the same house that she would much rather be in right now. That she would take some time for herself – time she didn't want. That she would spend time with other well, lively people – which was a need Whitney could acknowledge, if only grudgingly. She was here because between work, nursing school, and taking care of mom she hadn't had much time to spend on maintaining relationships. She had paid for it, as friends dropped away and drifted into things of past, though rather than discourage her this had only resulted in her considering whether those friends had been friends at all or whether they simply weren't right for her life as it had become._

 _But for right now she was here with him – rickety support crutch that he was – and his friends, listening to Amanda and Richie spew gross excuses for romantic things at one another._

 _It wasn't the sentiment she objected to, or the public display of it. Heaven knew she was as much a proponent for people being less sexually stunted and unhealthy as anyone else. No, it was the specific people she didn't care for. About as much as she didn't care for hearing couples calling one another mommy or daddy._

 _Ugh._

 _To put it as bluntly and simply as possible, they weren't her kind of people. They were partiers, overtly and loudly social – not to mention somewhat ingenuine – whereas she was the opposite, the outlier dragged into the fold by her mutual knowing of Mike. She knew full well they didn't care for her either – quiet and uptight and boring. It was just one more among the reasons they shouldn't stay together. He so wanted her to hang out with him and his friends and to be happy there, when she knew she never would be. Yet here she was, putting on her smiles and talking the talk she knew he wanted to hear anyway. She shouldn't complain even in her mind. It had been her choice to come; she could have told him no, but the reasons had seemed so sound at the time. Now she was wondering at what point this had become about him rather than getting her away from the sickroom._

 _She didn't really want to be home, either. Well, she did...but she didn't. There was a part of her – a part the rest of her would rather not recognize – which vehemently did_ not _want to be home staring at her textbooks without taking in any of it, waiting for her mom to die. As loud and pervasive as her need to absorb every sliver of time with her was, Whitney could not quite let go of that selfish desire to just run away, bury her head in the dirt, and pretend her world wasn't being torn up by the roots._

 _Once they found the clearing, the task of assembling tents managed to quell some of the noise in her head, encouraging her to focus on physical labor and problem solving rather than thoughts. At least for the time being._

 _Until night swept in to force her problems into sharp perspective._

~/~

Trees sped by, the blurred columnar shape of one bleeding into the others as she ran past them. She scaled a shallow rise gnarled with the knucklebone knots of roots in three leaping strides and darted on into a wide patch of brush.

There was such a difference between now and the last time she had run through these woods, and not only in that she was adequately fed and rested and thereby slightly better off in terms of endurance. She was more familiar with the terrain. The trees and foliage no longer felt oppressive and cage-like looming around her. While it was most likely true that Jason had kept her well away from any roads or paths, the possibility of finding one no longer seemed akin to scaling the side of Mount Everest. The fact that this wasn't a mad, panicked-animal dash certainly helped, too.

The chain thumped uncomfortably against her breastbone with every stride where it looped crosswise over her torso, dragging heavily at her right shoulder, but she endured. It was better than carrying it in her arms. At least this way she could actually run with proper posture even if it did feel like she was weight training. She was regretting not sparing a few minutes to work out a way to bring some water with her, though. A half full jug would have been too bulky and cumbersome to carry even if she'd managed to find a bag to carry it in, but maybe she could have searched in the kitchen and found something else – a bottle or a jar— _damn!_ There had been an entire box full of mason jars on the workbench. Conveniently forgotten until it was of the least help to her. Typical.

Whitney sighed, rolled her eyes at herself, and turned around. She doubled back for several minutes, zigzagging through a copse of gigantic firs and avoiding the soft places where she would leave obvious tracks. Even these little things might do nothing. She had no idea what Jason's true tracking abilities were, and she may very well be wasting her time, but she had to try – to be quiet and quick and do whatever she could to make herself more difficult for the apex predator to find. She had to try.

She realized that she could have gone through the camp. The road that led out from the cabins was mainly dirt now, any gravel left was surely from long summers past, but it was still a road, and must have led to a paved one. Which in turn must lead to civilization. Eventually. But she might be completely wrong; and even if she was right, wouldn't he expect her to go that way? It didn't seem wise to risk it. Not that just diving into some random stretch of woods was wise by any means. It had still felt like the safer route.

Confusion continued to swirl about her head in a fog as her memory kept swinging back to the moment when the lock fell: when she had sat, frozen upon her little mattress torn violently between shock and a soaring, disbelieving hope.

Had he truly forgotten to set the lock? She couldn't imagine him _forgetting_ such a thing. Not patient, deliberate, methodical Jason. But what else could explain it? What else but the highly unlikely chance that he had done it deliberately. As a test to see if she would run? Or...an invitation to set herself free? Neither made sense: and for the longest time she had simply stared at the pool of chain desperately trying to scrape together and idea of what to do. She had to leave, didn't she? She had to at least attempt it, even if it was a test, even if it meant losing some of the niceties of the past few days.

Didn't she?

Why the idea had brought guilt curl smoke-like in her chest cavity was unclear. Nor had she liked it. Yet she had still lingered there on her makeshift nest as her uncertainty spiraled into a far more troubling doubt.

She was disturbed by her own hesitation; disturbed that she could not identify whether the cause was fear of being caught and what it might bring, or of something else. Although what else could it possibly be?

It had been hours now since she'd left: since she'd finally gathered up the coils of chain and slunk up through the trapdoor and out of the house, breath trapped and shivering in the back of her mouth the entire way. It was nearly twilight now, the sky streaked with glorious swaths of pink and orange, which tinted the tufts of cloud in brilliant cotton candy colors. She was still free, still pacing herself between stints of running and swift walking, all the while doubts darted about in the back of her mind with all the too-random insistence of pesky flies.

Should she have stayed? But why, out of pity? Out of some do-gooder urge to change things, as if such a thing would ever be possible? Of course she felt awful for him: he had watched his own mother's head being severed from her body, leaving him utterly alone in the world. What must that do to a child? The pieces of her so inclined toward helping and healing had hurt for his hurt, natural empathy blazing as she was yanked back and forth between her disgust at the ones responsible for the torment he had suffered and a convoluted amalgamation of pity and protectiveness that she had no business feeling. He was not a puppy to rehabilitate, not a broken bone to be set and mended. And none of those things that had happened – nor any others – made him her responsibility. Even if she was right in her suspicion that he was just in need companionship and affection, she was in no place to give it. She had her own life waiting for her, responsibilities, and...and he had _kidnapped her,_ damn it! That negated everything else.

At least it should have.

The trees gave way around her and she slowed, stopped, turning in a tight circle as she surveyed the space around her. She had come upon a trail edged by slender birches, their white bark all the more ghostly in the growing gloom. Something about it was pinging the bell of familiarity in the back of her brain, and when she followed the trail to her left for roughly four yards, she found the little clearing dappled with clusters of short, wild plants. The ping climbed to a full-on chime.

It was difficult to tell for sure – Jason was clearly well accustomed to cleaning up the messes left in the wake of the carnage he wrought. The tents and bags were gone, the charred ring of the fire pit had vanished from the knotted base of the tree, but she was almost eighty percent certain it was their camp.

She took a step closer, her curiosity as strong as it was morbid. Were there still holes where the tent stakes had been? Would she be able to find the charcoal remnants of their fire? Would there be anything left to hint that five campers had been here, if only for a few hours, or had it all been obliterated – wiped away as though they had never existed to begin with? A metallic glint caught the edge of her vision and a chill rippled up her spine. The bear trap had been reset, dusted with leaves and broken branches artfully laid to mask it from view whilst still leaving the teeth free to clamp down on the next unsuspecting leg.

Her hand clutched tight to a loop of chain, palm slick with sweat that felt far too like the blood that had coated her fingers. Stomach heaving, she turned on her heel, walked straight across the trail and dove back into the woods at a jog.

The shadows had lengthened, deepening as the sun sank gradually lower and dragged the light with it. She had a rough idea of where she needed to go and where she was in relation to it – certainly far better than she had expected to having happened upon the campsite – but she was not above admitting that there was a sizable gap in her knowledge and without the aid of light the going was bound to get difficult. Her body had been giving signs of strain for a good while now, and its protests would only be growing louder from here on. Not only that, but it was going to get harder to tell whether or not she was leaving a trail, and while she wasn't positive how well Jason could operate in the dark she was more inclined to assume he'd be unhindered and move her ass rather than risk it. She needed to take advantage of the light while she had it.

Almost without her having to think it her body picked up the pace, strides lengthening, breath automatically adjusting to increase the power and thereby the speed. When she came to the stretch of seemingly flat and even ground, by instinct she ran as fast and hard as she could convince her muscles to go. She made it almost all the way across the clearing, successfully dodging an old, rotted stump and a patch of rock-studded earth without a hitch.

As a matter of fact, everything about this dramatic venture had gone far too smoothly. Something that became very clear to Whitney when her foot descended and the rotten wood beneath it gave way.

She went sprawling, back and shoulder screaming as she hit the ground and what must have been half a felled, decomposing tree. Scrambling to right herself, she hissed at the shock of pain that radiated up her leg. Limping, she staggered forward, feeling the tight twinge in her ankle.

" _Shit!_ " she spat her frustration. If it wasn't sprained it was as good as, and she was screwed. Although not as screwed as she would have been had she planted her foot in a trap – which she very well could have.

Shock and adrenaline mixed horribly with a sour shot of relief. Jesus Christ on a cupcake, she was an absolute idiot. All this time she had just been running around out here not considering what horrible deadly things might be concealed from sight. How close she might have come to losing a leg...or her life. Even after having the blatant reminder shoved directly in her face.

 _God damn idiot._

She reached forward, straining for the nearest tree at the clearing's edge and seized it. Digging her fingertips into the peeling bark she drag-hopped her way into the woodsy shadows. Leaning against the tree for support, she tested her weight again, slowly, trying to gauge whether she could get away with wrapping it. Although what with was a question for the ages. It didn't matter anyway – the ankle and part of the corresponding foot were already too swollen to carry her far.

Focusing hard on the sounds around her she listened, hoping to hear the running water of the stream. Breeze rustling leaves. The annoyed chitter of a squirrel. The musical chorus of frogs. Yes, good – frogs meant water.

Whitney hobbled forward, following the sound, and if the chain roped around her had been a burden it was nothing next to this. Though she did her best to keep weight off her right foot by moving between tree trunks as though they were gigantic crutches, using it was inevitable and with every anemic half-step she felt the throb travel progressively farther up her calf. If she could just get to the stream she could use the cold water as a natural ice pack, at least to keep the swelling from getting worse if she couldn't bring it down.

Furiously she swiped back the hair plastered to her sweaty cheek and took another lurching step into the trunk of a tree, feeling the skin under her left thumb sting with a slice of bark. Perfect. Honestly, did anyone naturally have luck this bad? It was like some rigorous karmic deity was set on thwarting her at every turn.

What the hell, universe? _What. The. Hell._

Several agonizingly slow steps later, she had to stop. She still could hear no water sounds, only the voices of the frogs bouncing off the foliage to sound closer than they truly were. She braced her shoulder against the tree and lifted the coils of chain, adjusting them so the metal links crossed her chest the opposite way. Her back ached from the uneven weight and from the fall. There was dirt and wood rot all over her butt – which she couldn't see but knew was there. She was dirty, greasy, and tired, any minute now it was going to start getting cold, her foot was throbbing, and she wanted to go home. Why couldn't everything just stop being a colossal asshole and _let her_ _go home!_

The sharp snap of a twig rent the quiet like the burst of a gunshot and she jumped.

She hadn't been afraid before, but now she could feel the cold trickle of it in the beads of sweat trailing down her back. There were other things in these woods besides frogs and squirrels; things she was in no way equipped to handle.

It must have been that her internal prey drive had skyrocketed. Nothing else would have explained why she spontaneously sensed she was no longer alone. Sure enough, no sooner had she twisted to peer into the shadowy trees did she see Jason burst from the edge of the clearing all those yards behind her, and her insides became a riot of relief and resignation.

She knew the instant he caught sight of her – knew it by the slight upward jerk of his head, the angling of his great body as he made for her. He wasn't running, but then he didn't need to now, with her thoroughly hobbled by her own graceless stupidity. Instead he simply strode toward her, all long, powerful legs and single-minded focus; swift and sure, and radiating tension. Instantly she remembered that first night when he had borne down on her with the machete. Yet it wasn't the same, and that had nothing to do with the lack of weapon, or of murderous intent.

She watched him draw near, booted feet swallowing up the space between them – stepping over felled branches and sweeping aside drooping limbs as though they were substantial as spider webs – and was startled by the odd flutter somewhere below her sternum; a soft lurch not far off from...anticipation?

She blinked, startled, and stepped back, wincing at the dull throb in her foot. As if her sign of pain had been a shout, the pace of his stride increased alongside his urgency to get to her.

Just like that, everything shifted, her mind transposing the scattered fragments of fear into something altogether different. The menace he once exuded had left him long ago, but now she saw something else in the way he stalked her like the predator he was. As he drew near enough for her to see the intensity glittering behind the holes in his mask she realized with a breathless jolt that she wasn't sure he was going to stop when he reached her. For a brief, bewildering instant she thought he might seize her, haul her up against the nearest tree, and...

One arm extended, heavy hand closing around her upper arm. It was gentle, if firm, and nothing he hadn't done at least a dozen times before, yet it made her flinch as though struck. Automatically she moved to step back and her swollen ankle twinged, threatening to buckle.

She swayed and his grip tightened, his eyes raking down the length of her. It was purely clinical, trying to locate the source of her flinch, yet she felt the weight of his scan like a physical touch.

After the quick assessment, he took her by the other arm and lifted her straight off her feet. Her stomach flipped, and she was almost disappointed when instead of tossing her over his shoulder as she expected he simply tucked her into the crook of an arm, hand splayed beneath her knees to support her weight as though she were a housecat.

He turned to begin the return trek through the undergrowth and she didn't fight him. She did, however, wonder what had just happened.

In the beginning she had been almost certain he intended to rape her. Why else spare her and keep her like he had? A man as large as he was surely had the testosterone levels of a freaking bull. She had been afraid then, as most women would have been. But the contrast between how she had felt about the idea then – of rape, and specifically him being the source – versus how her stomach had clenched at the split-second image of him pinning her to a tree and stepping between her knees just now was alarming, to say the ever-loving _least._ Had she actually thought he intended to drag her off like a caveman and have his way with her? Where in the holy heck had that come from? Why would she think...but that wasn't the real question here. The question was why had she not been repulsed? She knew what that warm flutter low in her belly meant, and it coincided with neither fear nor revulsion.

Shaken, her hands tightened convulsively where they had automatically lowered to grip his collar, wincing at the sting as the cut in her palm pulled and began to bleed. His shoulder tightened against her side and she knew it was in response, knew he had smelled the blood and that the subtle quickening of his stride was a result of this. She was excruciatingly aware of him in ways she hadn't been just minutes ago, and in ways she was intensely uncomfortable with. The bunch and shift of muscle beneath his clothes as he moved. The way his other arm hung at his side, empty, unneeded in bearing her weight. But she had already known how strong he was; had known it since the beginning. She knew how he moved. So why was she so hyper-aware of it now?

His eyes kept flicking to her as he walked – darting, snap-quick glances that she had a difficult time interpreting. Confusion? Uncertainty? Something else entirely? It was as though he half expected her to break her acquiescence by doing something underhanded and nasty like whack him over the head and start running again. As if she could have done either effectively.

She saw the tiny frown line crease above his left eye she understood. Worry, yes. But not that kind. No, he was worried about her stupid self with her scraped palm and busted ankle and – probably – the biggest case of crazy-eyes he'd ever seen a person produce. He probably thought she'd hit her head, too, and was concerned for her health while he toted her back to her prison. Because that was all he ever did: patiently, resolutely return her as one might have a pet that kept venturing into the neighbor's yard.

Housecat indeed.

A short, strangled noise emanated from somewhere south of her throat. Something both cackle and sob, and yet neither at once. Again she saw his eye flick to her and Whitney was almost positive his brows had risen with alarm behind the mask – which only made the collision of despairing hilarity that much worse.

~/~

Jason knew no words to describe the convoluted chaos that blazed through him when he came back and found her gone.

When he'd left her he had been unquestionably rattled, raw and vulnerable as though his soul had been flayed open by old memories that still stung and bled when dredged up. He had rushed to get her situated, his hands unsteady at metal links that slid and writhed like the coils of a grass snake as the space in his chest seemed to close in with every breath. There might have been tears on her cheeks, but he couldn't remember. He hadn't been able to look directly at her, hadn't been able to meet her gaze again after everything. His head was full of screams and his lungs full of water that wasn't there. He had fled the instant he could, and in his haste and desperation had clearly slipped. Both chain and girl were gone now, with not even an indent in the striped mattress left behind.

He had never told anyone what had happened. Any of it. No one had ever asked. No one had ever had a real chance to, if they would ever have cared, and he had not the voice to do so anyway. But he thought _she_ had cared...otherwise why look at him like that, sad and solemn. Hadn't she? Hadn't that been why it had felt like seeing a glimmer of his own pain reflected back at him through the lens of her too-bright eyes?

Metal winked; a shining bright spot amidst stacks of leather, paper, and laminate. He bent, enfolding the padlock within his palm and felt it snap shut, heard the click of the mechanism catching as it had not done before. Hours ago. Hours wherein he had thought...

Every organ he had seemed to sink with disappointment, not merely his stomach. The disappointment, in turn, annoyed him.

What, had he thought she would just stay put? As if she hadn't proven time and again that if given a mere inch of opportunity she would slip from the captivity she made no pains to hide that she detested. She was not a dog, she was not trained to mind – had no _incentive_ to mind – and whatever her tears or spoken sympathies might have implied, she felt no affection for him. There was no reason for her to stay. Why should he have hoped for anything else?

The annoyance flickered, a dying light beneath a gust of something he didn't recognize. Neither sadness nor grief, nor anger. He felt...hollow, empty. Had he hoped for that? Affection? Had he hoped that if he gave her an opening she might choose to stay with him?

The frown creasing his brow deepened. Was this the result of choosing not to kill? Or was it more than that, more than simply not taking a life? Was it the life itself; or rather, _whose_ life?

Jason rarely thought about what his life would have been like had things happened differently. In his mind there was little point in dwelling on might-have-beens when there was no possibility of making them real. Recently however, he had found his thoughts straying that way more than once.

He didn't know enough about what life was like for normal children, let alone normal adults, so it was hard for him to feel as though his imaginings weren't pure fantasy. Yet in his mind his mother would still be alive, the house as it had been then: a clean kind of chaos where everything was in its proper, messy place. Things would be just as they were and they would be happy. Logically he knew this wouldn't have been possible, that with time would have come natural change regardless of how hard he clung to what was. But he didn't know what to conjure in its place. He had no way to imagine what else could have been instead, where change could have taken them. He had been too young to absorb enough of the world to do so. Too young and too sheltered.

Had the events of those years ago not happened...would he have met Whitney? He supposed whatever events had brought her here would still have occurred, but what if because he had never drowned and mother had never died she and her friends decided to go somewhere else instead. Would she ever have had a reason to come to this place were it still an operating camp? Would there have been any reason he might come across her if she had? What would mother have thought of her?

The question came out of nowhere, completely blind-sighting him. What _would_ his mother think about this attachment he had clearly developed? Would she see Whitney's presence there as a good thing, or a threat? _A threat,_ his mind supplied immediately, and when his response to this was not the firm decision to eliminate said threat he felt his breath seize in his chest. Felt, for a moment, as though he were drowning again. Never once had he thought to disobey his mother's wishes. Not when he'd been little, not after she was gone. Granted, she had never explicitly ordered him to do what he did: it was all self-mandated; a duty assigned out of assumption and inherited rage. Still, over the years his certainty that he was doing what she would have wanted only solidified, grew stronger, deeper, to the point where it felt like a given order.

His thoughts circled back to those moments sitting by the lake spent reliving the events that had ended – and begun – everything. Even now with the buffer of hours he felt the rawness hovering close to the surface. It was a dull, panging ache not unlike the results of a kick to the chest. There was a part of him that wanted to blame Whitney for it – blame her questions, her curiosity about matters that didn't concern her – but he couldn't bring himself to commit. It wouldn't have mattered if she was there or not; prolonged closeness to the lake was like sticking the tip of a knife into a healing wound and wiggling it around. The only thing he could blame her for was her trespass and even the window for that had passed him by. Ultimately, the blame was his. As with a number of other things.

Things like disobeying. Because he _had_ disobeyed, it was just that a guilty little part of him simply... _didn't care._

He rose with a fluid surge of energy, not bothering to close the trapdoor when he emerged. He wasn't sure why he felt such a powerful need to have her back. After all, he wasn't going to do anything with her. All he was going to do was drag her back to the tunnel and tuck her securely into her corner. Yet the thought of anything else was something he could not stand. It wasn't entirely a comfortable feeling, but he didn't have time to analyze it now.

When he came to the edge of what remained of the porch he paused. The first time Whitney had run she had run like a prey animal that had forgotten the safety which lay in silence: all base fear and need. This had not been like that. He wasn't sure she had run at all, for as he scanned the ground that lined the edge of the rotting wood he saw no impression to indicate where she had stepped down to launch into a sprint. He had seen her run: even hindered by the weight of chains, dehydrated and exhausted, she had been deer-quick and savvy enough to duck and weave in attempts to lose him. Given the time and space to move freely, she very well might have simply walked to the trees before darting away. He would find her, of that he had no doubt. But it might take time he couldn't afford to spend.

He had to move quickly. The sun was already sinking low in the sky and the longer it took him to find and follow her trail the higher the risk she was lost or hurt, or killed. The big predators would be coming out soon to hunt, and she had nothing to protect herself. Nothing but him.

Crouching, Jason studied the ground, fingertips brushing dry, patchy grass and dirt. He found a shallow half-moon divot in the earth and traced the curve with his thumb, considering the size. The heel of a shoe: minimal tread, recently made. Lifting his chin, he scanned the ground around it until he found another – this one nearly a complete, the toe half of the same shoe. His head rose, his eyes following the line made by the two prints to a point at the tree line.

 _There._

He rose and followed the invisible line, eyes trained low to spot any other signs left of her passing. She had been careful, he noted, for what trail he did find was faint and widely dispersed, often requiring more intent scouring than he usually needed to track a human. She must have made efforts to hide her tracks from him – a suspicion only verified when her trail abruptly turned in on itself to head back the way she had come, doubling back in the hope of confounding him. Clever. Not quite clever enough to work, but that was to more a credit to his skill than any fault of hers. Quite the contrary, if his worry hadn't been climbing by the second he would have admired the display of wit under stress. But just now it was causing _him_ stress – so much that he wasn't sure he wouldn't wring her foolish little neck when he found her. Of course he wouldn't. Doing so would defeat the entire point of this endeavor. Yet with every minute she spent out here alone in the growing dark the greater her chances of coming to some disaster.

He had never experienced worry like this before. In small, fleeting doses occasionally yes, but never so much so thickly, building until it pooled so heavily in his throat that he was choking on it. A worry so distressing on its own that he had no room for any distress at its existence. He had no time to question, no time to analyze the reasons why it was so important to get her back. No time to wonder what would happen if he didn't, or why. In the moment, none of it mattered. Nothing mattered but the signs of her passing; partial imprints of footsteps, mussed leaves and grass, bent twigs, fine cottony threads caught on the peeling bark of a birch tree that he very nearly missed altogether.

He bent to examine them against the pale backdrop of his fingertips and sure enough found them to have belonged to her shirt. At once comforted that he was still on the right track and aggravated that he still had not caught up he kept moving, working down the length of a man-made path for several yards before turning a complete one hundred and eighty degrees to dive back into the green.

Perspiration was beginning to rise, dampening his palms and brow and between his shoulder blades in a way it never had outside of his drowning dreams and with it, the anxious dread that he didn't want to examine enough to name. So help him, when he found her he was going to make her regret putting him through this.

A sound caught his ear, abrupt and out of place in the dusky quiet: a noisy rustling like something dragging through the undergrowth.

For a split second he was torn. If he followed the sound and it turned out to be nothing, he risked losing the trail, risked having to waste precious time and light picking it up again. But if that sound had been Whitney being hurt or worse and he delayed...

The muffled curse solved his dilemma. He abandoned the tracks he had just been poring over, surging headlong through the trees in the direction from which the sounds had come not bothering to lessen his natural quiet to warn of his approach. She deserved to be startled, the little idiot. Fear tangled with the worry and flooded his veins like fever, spiraling into a trembling, irrational anger. He charged into a tiny clearing, noting the clear marks of heavy footfalls in the spongy grass, the shattered remnants of a fallen tree that had rotted from the inside out and now lay in a scattered shambles where someone had fallen. His eyes rose as if pulled, piercing through the fringe of trees to settle on the narrow white face peering out at him.

The anger twisted into so swiftly into relief that he felt nearly winded. He headed straight for her, hardly having to order his feet to move, and when he finally reached her – when his hand closed around her arm – the relief crested in a way that felt nothing like the victory he might have expected. All halfhearted mental threats of neck wringing and punishment had gone from him, leaving only the barest fragments of the annoyance that had bitten so sharply before. None of it seemed to matter, because he had found her and she was safe. Injured, it seemed, for she staggered when she took a step back as though there were an arrow shaft in her leg. But safe now. With him.

What an odd thing, to be the source of safety for someone. Him: the hunter, eradicator, the threat in the dark. It wasn't something he ever could have expected.

She hadn't struggled when he seized her – something else he might have expected – made no effort to evade him. He held no illusions that she would not have fled had she felt the need, even on her obviously injured foot. She had let him fold her into the bend of his arm and carry her back without so much as a hint of protest, curling her fingers into his collar not to push at him, but simply to hold on. He might have thought her merely resigned, knowing her ploy for escape over, except that he couldn't quite shake the feeling that there something else there. Neither could he shake the way she had looked at him as he crossed the distance between them.

It hadn't been fear. He knew what her fear looked like, smelled like, sounded like, and it hadn't been that. But fear was the closest thing he could find to call it. She had stared at him like a deer – felled but not yet dead – like he was the wolf coming to tear out her throat. It hadn't been fear, but it hadn't _not_ been fear. Whatever it was, it was still there, a sort of wary alarm bright in the whites of her eyes every time he snuck a glance her way, and he could feel her soft shape trembling against his shoulder all the way back to the house.

The warm copper scent of the blood at her palm strengthened when he lowered her to the little bed, the cut there pulling open anew when her grip tightened at his jacket. He couldn't think why. Surely she knew he wouldn't drop her. He caught her hand in his before she could tuck it away somewhere, examining the shallow rend in the skin at the base of her palm. It was a surface cut, nothing serious. Releasing her hand, he reached down toward her right foot, grasping the ragged, dirty hem of her pant leg. Whitney flinched, but didn't move to extract herself or shove him away, and he folded the fabric carefully back to reveal the red and swollen ankle. He didn't know what to do for that. Clearly it needed tending, but this was not an injury he knew how to treat. The precise kind of injury he had hoped to avoid by freeing one of her hands when out walking.

Pointedly he gestured to the ankle, hoping she could tell him what to do for it. When his eyes met hers, he found yet more of the fear that wasn't fear, and felt an uneasy chill rippled across his skin – the sudden sense of something shifting that he could neither identify nor follow.

Seemingly understanding what he wanted, Whitney cleared her throat.

"Take—um, we'll have to take my shoe off..." she began and he immediately set to work on the laces, not noticing the awkward flutter of her hands or the stiffness in her spine as she leaned back against the wall.

Successfully sliding the shoe and grimy sock from her foot, he looked to her for the next instruction.

~/~

All things considered, Whitney thought she managed to pull off a decent impression of nonchalance.

She had spent the entire trip back to the tunnel stewing in a pool of her own out of control emotions, wheeling wildly from panic to confusion and likely hitting every note along the spectrum in between. It had been reflexive, surely. Automatic. For a moment she had experienced a clean separation of brain and body, and while the former could tell the difference between a normal man and a serial killer, the latter – it seemed – could not. It had merely recognized the presence of a tall, strong male in the absolute prime of his possibly undying life and responded accordingly. She was determined to think no more of it, not to analyze or pick apart something that had meant nothing, because it had _been_ nothing.

That had proved something of a challenge, though, since – spooked as she was – she now found herself physically reacting like a trauma patient to everything he did, to the point where it took digging her nails into the shoulders of his coat to keep from flinging herself away from him when all he'd done was adjusted to put her down. To the point where her wince as he pushed the leg of her jeans from her busted ankle had had nothing to do with pain but just incredible, overwhelming _awareness._

They were back to their comfortable posts as captive and captor, back to the weird state of normalcy they had carved out of craziness, she in her corner and him looking over the scrapes she had acquired not unlike the way he examined the bruises beneath her cuffs every few days. But it wasn't quite…normal. The biggest difference lay in the chain still coiled she had long since removed from around herself. She had thought it would be the first thing he did, secure the thing – and with it, her – to the wall and seal her lack of freedom in literal stone. But he hadn't: it still lay in a puddle of links on the mattress. She supposed it must be because he assumed she wouldn't be stupid enough to try anything with him crouched right there next to her. Which would be a correct assumption.

She'd had to guide him through removing her shoe and finding something upon which she could prop the foot to elevate it. Ice, she had guessed, was out of the question but she had asked all the same; and he'd left her for long minutes, chain still in place coiled over her shoulder because clearly she wasn't going anywhere. The steep increase in her own helplessness was unpleasant to the point of agitation.

He had returned some time later with an old cooler, which he set down on her crate next to the first aid kit and proceeded to kneel upon the ground at the base of her little mattress.

With implicit gentleness the fingers of one large hand tucked beneath the slope of her calf, coaxing her to extend her leg at the knee to rest her heel against his thigh. She had made a feeble attempt to retract her foot from his grasp, whereupon he shot her a sharply quelling look that she interpreted to read: _you got yourself into this and you can deal with the consequences._ She meekly surrendered while he opened the cooler to extract a dripping washcloth. A cloth which he wrong liberally of cold water and laid carefully across her swollen ankle.

Any desire she might have had to make things difficult for him was entirely nonexistent now. It did no damage to her pride to admit that this was mostly because he was, in a way, helping her: following her instructions to the exact syllable to care for her angry ankle and even going so far as to clean the split in her palm with water and plain antibacterial soap which stung like the dickens. Quite frankly, the fact that he'd come after her at all when he really hadn't had to was enough to quash any attitude she might have given him for spoiling her attempt at escape. He could just as easily have left her to her fate. She wanted to be free? Fine, then. She could be free to fall in the dark and break her neck, free to stagger around in unfamiliar woods until she inevitably perished from exposure. All along he must have known true escape was impossible, that she would never make it far enough on her own to be a threat to him. Technically speaking, it had been as much a rescue as anything else. An extremely atypical one to be sure, but still. She was grateful.

"Thank you," she said, decision made to be gracious, as was appropriate. His chin tilted slightly as he blinked at her, clearly not having expected what he evidently found an out of place comment. "For coming after me," she clarified, "and for this."

He seemed to remain nonplussed, yet he managed to insert just enough judgement into his stare to make her squirm. Still his hands were careful as he removed the cloth from her ankle, returning it to the cooler to extract a second which he wrung out and laid across her foot. Such large hands, yet he was unspeakably gentle with her when she really didn't deserve it. Was he overcompensating? Afraid to hurt her by accident because he was so much bigger than she? Or was he simply a gentle soul beneath all the layers of pain and anger? He skimmed his fingertips over the bones in her foot, feeling for breaks, or so she suspected. There were none, but something inside her still softened at his taking the time to look. He then followed the curve of her heel, bypassing the swelling to trace the bones in her shin, up toward the knee. It was then that she recollected the spill she had taken on their walk earlier, that he had watched her shake out this very same knee and deem it fine. Observant of him. But then, she wasn't exactly surprised.

Apparently satisfied, he gestured for her hands and began his routine checking of her wrists. Releasing the cuffs and unwinding the ace bandaging to examine the skin beneath, though he did not, she noted, replace either manacle between checking. For the first time in weeks she was completely unbound, which felt lovely...and strangely vulnerable. The only reason he didn't was because she couldn't go anywhere.

"I'm not going to run again," she blurted, not realizing she had come to the decision until the statement burst free.

He sent her another look, this one decidedly disbelieving. Yet it wasn't the exaggeratedly snide, raised-eyebrow-with-a-side-of-smirk kind of skepticism. It was flat, simple. It wasn't necessarily intended to be read, wasn't given as a means of communicating the sentiment. He simply didn't believe her and she could tell.

"Yeah, I wouldn't trust me either," she remarked with a pointed glance to evidence of her foolishness resting in his lap. "But I won't. There's obviously no point. I'll never get far enough away that you won't find me, and even if I did chances are I'd just get myself maimed."

Something wry in his gaze told her that he didn't disagree with that statement and she nearly laughed. Biting the inside of her cheek to curb the impulse she ducked her chin and hid behind the fall of her hair, averting her eyes down to the neat bandage wrapped about her palm and covering the cut there. She could clearly see the difference between the skin that had met the touch of soap and the skin that had not. There were as clear line just at the top edge of the bandaging where clean gave way to the rest of her grimy hand.

Well...now was as good a time as any. Plus, being hobbled as she was, he might be that much more likely to agree.

"I know now really isn't a good time to ask for a favor," she began uncertainly. She didn't look at him – not out of any attempt to come across as harmless or submissive, but simply because she was anxious and didn't know what else to do.

He made a small sound. A short huff of an exhale that might as well have served as an exasperated: _what?_

She took a breath.

"Um, next time we're at the bathrooms, could I take a shower? I'm—well, I've been ok so far, there's soap at the sinks, but I feel like my skin's going to rot off if I don't shower. And I need to wash my clothes or I'm going to get...get sick."

He sat back to study her, and she felt the muscle beneath her foot heel tighten as he did – which had the strange effect of increasing the nervousness that really had no place here. Why was she nervous, exactly? The worst he could do was deny her, and while sure at some point that would cause problems, for the moment it wouldn't hurt her. Yet her pulse had spiked, fluttering wildly in her throat like a trapped insect with every ticking second he spent regarding her in motionless silence. Weighing her request.

Again the burden of her own helplessness pressed in on her, restlessness piling atop the nerves until she felt herself actually twitching in attempts to alleviate it – wringing the hem of her shirt between her fingers at the spot where a new tear had formed.

She had been helpless since the beginning; she knew that. But the injury made what had been a situation she could grudgingly accept into something borderline unbearable. It wasn't that she couldn't walk on her own, because she could. It wasn't because she couldn't run, because that was pointless anyway. It was because she had taken advantage of a mistake made in a state of emotional weakness. Forced him to come after her to save her ridiculous hide from potentially much worse than she had gotten – regardless of whether he had done it for this or for other reasons – proving herself to be as untrustworthy as she had been at the start. He had no reason to allow her this, no reason to do anything for her. His tending to her stupid foot was more than she deserved and it was her own stupid fault. That, she realized, was the source of her nerves: the fear that she had irrevocably ruined the tentative equilibrium they had struggled to find.

He reached for her, long fingers surprisingly dexterous as he brushed the messy curtain of hair back from her face. They grazed her cheek as he did and she felt the callus lining his fingertips, rough and rasping against her skin. It seemed an oddly affectionate gesture, especially considering the circumstances. Or perhaps it was merely curiosity, seeking an answer to a question. He either needed or wanted to see her face and therefore he moved the obstacle in the way, yet the softness of it seemed to belie an intent that reached beyond mere curiosity.

He didn't touch her often – not since she had barked at him not to all those days ago. To physically move her, yes, or to treat her growing collection of scrapes and handle the manacles, but never without any obvious purpose. Never just...because. Automatically she lifted her gaze to his, sliding across the stoic shield of fiberglass to the eyes beneath. Even set so deeply in shadow as they were underground she could still make out the color of them, the lack of crease to indicate anything outside of mild scrutiny.

Whitney rarely felt physically small. She had been taller than average from an early age and her school days had been rife with teasing because of it, not to mention how difficult it was to consider dating when not even a single prospect came up past the point of her chin. It was less prevalent in adulthood, but it was still a rare thing to come across a man who truly made her forget her own height. Even Mike, who had managed to beat her by a full three inches, had merely felt suited rather than truly larger. Jason, by contrast, made her feel downright delicate. Just having his hand next to her cheek, broad and strong, was enough to render her slender and willowy and all manner of other flowery descriptors that had no place in real language.

Before she had time to register how uncomfortable this should probably make her, he had lowered the hand, nodding, and she found herself somewhat winded by her relief.

"Thank you," she half-sighed, to which he merely used that same hand to point down at her ankle which, she gathered, was a clarifying concern. Would she be able to maneuver on her own enough to do so with her injury? She expected so, after all she had proven relatively capable of limping around, and there were plenty of surfaces to utilize as crutches in the bathroom. "I can manage," she assured him, "it's just..."

She hesitated then, nervously scraping her lip between her teeth. Lifting her hands and jangled the cuffs and chain with a quiet rattle.

"I can't with these on. Which is why it's not a good time to ask."

Jason snorted, and when she looked she saw the crease of humor at the outer corners of his eyes. Unexpectedly she experienced a swift impulse to smack him as she might have smacked Clay for doing something bratty.

"Ok," she snapped, "I know I'm useless and can't run, you don't need to rub it in." He made the low, rasping exhalation that she knew to be a laugh, and pressed her lips together.

Well, she thought, at least he wasn't too pissed to laugh at her. That was absolutely a good thing.

The next thing she knew Jason was carefully moving her foot from his leg so he could stand and he was extending a hand to her, clearly with the intent to help her up.

"Oh," she blinked, taken aback, "I didn't mean right now, I can wait..."

He gave a small shrug as if to ask _why not now_ , and she supposed he had a point. In theory, she _should_ probably wait until her ankle had healed up a bit, but the prospect of being clean – really, truly clean – was far too great a temptation to bring it up.

Bracing herself back against the wall, she mused: "any chance there are some extra clothes lying around? Mine are...nasty."

His hand dropped slightly, retracting the offer of help up, and at first she assumed this to be a flat _no_ until she realized he was considering the question. Half a second later he had extended his hand again, palm out toward her this time telling her to wait. Then he turned and bustled out into the tunnel again. About half an hour later he reemerged, a small bundle of fabric draped over one arm and looking pleased with himself.

She folded the clothes against her chest with one arm and gripped his offered hand to hoist herself onto her good leg. He helped her hobble up the shallow incline to the trapdoor, cupping one of her elbows as she clung to his other arm. As always he went through first, heaving himself up with near effortless ease before dropping to a knee and reaching down for her, hands bracketing her waist to lift her out. Half by instinct and half by routine she braced her empty hand against his shoulder, startled anew at the lack of the clanking metal she had grown so accustomed to and trying not to notice the way the outer seam of his trousers strained over the length of his thigh, the muscle bunched and powerful.

Rather than have her hobble, Jason merely adjusted his grip around her, once again tucking her against the crook of his arm to keep her off her injury. He carried her the entire way – from the house and across the campground to the bathrooms – going so far as to ascend the concrete step to bring her inside, though it required him to duck an inch or so to keep from smacking his head against the door frame.

He put her down just inside the door, close enough to the line of sinks that she could reach out and grip the edge of the counter for support. He lingered there for a moment, looking more ungainly and awkward in the bright, cramped little building than he ever had before, giving Whitney the impression that he was trying to determine what, if anything, he should do now. Did she need more help? Should he just leave?

"I think I'm ok from here," she assured him. When he continued to linger, she added, "I'll yell if I need help. Ok?"

This appeared satisfactory, for Jason turned to go. He paused again in the midst of ducking his head, reaching up to pluck a clean towel from the shelves and handing it to her.

He hadn't needed to – she would have been able to grab one herself – but still the gesture had been intended as helpful and she treated it as such, smiling softly as she took the proffered towel.

"Thank you."

With a tiny little half-shrug he ducked outside, no doubt to station himself against the outer wall.

It was an effort to cross the narrow bathroom, and she was grateful that the sinks reached the entire way across the space. She managed to hobble to the opposite side where the building opened up at the end of the toilet stalls into the showers where a wide, plywood cabinet stood. Though she had begun to formulate a few wild dreams that there might be a little forgotten bag of toiletries beyond the cabinet doors, it had been far outside of her reach with her tether and so had not been able to look. When Jason threw it open, she discovered her hopes had not been in vain.

While the cabinet was mostly empty, there was a round red basket inside piled with a full-size bottle of shampoo and one of conditioner, two different kinds of body wash, lotion, toothpaste and several extra brushes. There was a wide-toothed comb and a round bristle brush, bobby pins, powerful sunscreen, and – tucked behind all that – a _hair dryer_. It looked as though someone had brought enough supplies to last them several weeks and had either left them by accident or with the intent of returning to use them up.

Whoever had left the toiletries behind Whitney was grateful to them, though she did try not to think too hard about the likely long dead girl as she picked up the basket and toted it into the showers. Unlike the communal ones in her high school gym, the showers here were separated into individual stalls. Each had been hung with an opaque plastic curtain – though one of these was missing, the plastic little more than shreds left clinging to the rings as though it had been torn away – and each contained a little shelf on which to set soap and the like.

Getting out of her dirty clothes was easy enough until she came to her pants. Being unable to put weight on one foot made shimmying out of them an exercise in balance and in leaning far forward without tipping forward and getting a face full of cement. Finally, she was able to extract herself enough to step out from the puddle of grimy denim and turn on the water.

For a split second after she twisted the knob she was convinced nothing was going to happen. But after a few seconds spent with bated breath there was a faint rattle of old pipes and jets of water streamed down from the shower head.

She was downright giddy when she stepped inside the cramped little space, as steam curled about her limbs and heat soaked through her skin. It felt so good that the utter ecstasy of it nearly hurt. It didn't matter that the water pressure was weak or that she had to either prop herself against the wall with a hand or a shoulder to keep the weight off her angry foot. For generous minutes she simply stood there, turning back and forth under the hot water and basking in the heat and prospect of being clean before she even thought about picking up the soap. When she did, however, it was to work up a thick layer of suds and scrub them into her skin and hair until she tingled all over.

The body wash she selected was lovely and lemony without being overpowering, and with a faint touch of mint that – whether it did or not – seemed to flush all the dirt and oil and grime from days and nightmares from her pores. By the time she was done, her skin was a burnished lobster pink and her hair hung in lank, damp coils about her neck: clean, and possibly the happiest she had been for a long time.

The clothes Jason had found for her were ill fitted. The leggings were all right, though they bunched a bit around the knees. The shirt, however, was a monster of plaid flannel worn so thin that its very molecular structure seemed to have changed until it was an altogether different kind of fabric. The hem hung to mid-thigh and the sleeves had to be rolled back twice to free her hands. Still, it was soft, comfortable, and would breathe, so it didn't occur to her to be disappointed. She donned them, dragged a comb through her hair, and limped outside where Jason waited for her.

He was standing with his back against the wall just outside the door rather than out away from it like he usually did. For all the vigilance this suggested, he held his hands loose at his sides, his face tilted up to the leaf-dappled stretch of sky above him where a pair of little brown and cream birds flitted and cheeped.

It was an odd, still moment: one wherein which she didn't see a killer, or a captor. Just for a moment she saw nothing but a man. A large man in a mask who carried a big fucking knife at his side, true. But the kind of man with the patience to tote her around, to wait for her – who gave her the impression that he wouldn't have complained even if he'd had a voice with which to do so, though she had no evidence to substantiate that. A man with the capacity to be perfectly content spending his waiting time watching birds. For the first time since that horrible beginning, she saw someone neither dangerous nor threatening. Just someone who knew his place in the world and was completely comfortable there. It was so completely opposite of the person she remembered cowering from in the beginning that in the moment she spent staring she felt as though she had been picked up and enthusiastically shaken as a dog might a soft toy: her brain transposed into a little ball rattling around in her skull.

All people were complex. This just proved it to an extreme.

As she emerged he angled his head to look at her and his eyes narrowed ever so slightly, creasing at the inner corners. A frown.

She looked down at herself, holding her dirty clothes out and away from her body. "What?"

He pushed away from the wall to approach her. Pinching the sleeve of the shirt between two fingers he pulled it straight out from her arm to indicate the sheer volume of extra fabric there was, and she shrugged.

"Better too big than too small."

His eyes flicked up from the sleeve to find hers, regarding for a moment before lowering them again to the shirt, whereupon they took on an almost disapproving cast. Funny, she would have thought he would prefer she be in looser clothes.

He reached again, plucking this time at the excess fabric that gathered around her middle, and all of a sudden she was very much aware of how close he stood, the heat of his hand through the flannel worn thin by years of wear and washing. Aware of the fact that she wore no bra. The one she'd had had been far too grimy and stained to put back on. He either hadn't known to bring one, or there was simply none to bring – quite possible considering it was likely a man's shirt she wore – and until she found a way to wash her clothes more thoroughly than beating at them with a rock and body soap, she would have to go commando. A concept that hadn't bothered her much when dressing.

It bothered her now.

Releasing a soft, toneless huff Jason let the fabric slip from between his fingers and Whitney found she regained the power to breathe again.

~/~

She was different. Jason couldn't pinpoint what it was that made her seem so aside from the lack of dirt, but she did.

The clothes were far too big for her; the shirt alone nearly swallowed her. He rarely kept clothes, as they were almost never big enough to fit him. These had been the only things he could find amidst the detritus from the last camp he had deconstructed and simply hadn't yet had the time to be rid of. Yet they seemed to make her happy, for all that the shape of her was all but disappeared beneath the excess fabric. He shot another subtly examining look at her from across the cavern where he stood taking stock of his remaining supply of trap-making materials.

She was sitting comfortably on her mattress with her injured foot propped up the crate and cushioned with a folded blanket. She had rolled the gigantic plaid sleeves up nearly to her shoulders and was rubbing something that smelled spicy and floral from a little yellow bottle over her arms, humming to herself as she did.

Quite happy, then. Fascinating what water, soap, and new clothes had the power to do.

He glanced down at himself: at the thin, ragged shirt, stained by earth and sweat, the pants so faded that they no longer so much as resembled the color they had once been. At the coat with shredded sleeves and fraying hem. He had never cared much, or perhaps because clothing that fit him so rarely happened his way he had simply convinced himself he didn't. He remembered very clearly how mother had touted the virtues of cleanliness, and that however much he had struggled or complained – if only in his own mind – he remembered feeling better after every bath, with every shirt and sweater worn fresh out of the dryer. He did wash, every once in a while if he got overly grimy or bloody. If he turned slightly to the right he would see the lump of orange-brown soap he used sitting on its dish waiting to be carried to a fast-moving part of the stream.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Whitney set the bottle aside and lean back against the wall, the movements soundless without the chain to frame each one with a rattle. He hadn't cuffed her again upon bringing her back, having not seen the need. The chains, after all, were more of a product of convenience than necessity, at least when he was near. Though he wasn't yet sure he believed her claim that she wouldn't try to run away again, he had to agree that for the moment she wasn't going anywhere.

It was interesting: he'd thought her such a fragile thing at first, even when she'd fled and fought him, when she kicked and cursed and spat insults. But she wasn't. She was hardy and determined, if perhaps a bit hardheaded. In truth, he thought he rather admired her, if that's what the strange sense of kinship he felt was. Each of them had had the choice stolen from their hands, and each of them were making due, weren't they?

"Are you ok?"

His response was a visceral jerk, as though her voice had reached out like a hand and gripped him by the shoulder. He blinked; suddenly realizing that he had been staring, and felt oddly as though he had been caught doing something bad. Yet she was merely peering at him from over the folds of the blanket she'd wrapped around herself, an old, faded quilt he had found tucked away in a box upstairs.

"You were just sort of...standing there," she explained, though she needn't have, a hint of concern about the furrow in her brow.

He felt an odd pressure in his chest, an uncomfortable wrenching twist of emotion as he looked at her. He knew so little about her. Oh, he knew what face she made when she was displeased, how she would lift her chin and narrow her eyes ever so slightly when she was being stubborn. He knew that she favored her right hand and her left foot, that she preferred the shade to direct sunlight. He knew she loved books and liked the rats and was thereby likely kind-natured. But he did not know where she came from, where she lived, whether she still had a mother of her own – wherever home was – waiting for her to come home. It wouldn't have affected any choices he made, but that he couldn't so much as ask made him frustrated with his limited means of communication more than anything else ever had. It felt wrong somehow, to demand so much and know so little.

"...Jason?"

Her frown had deepened slightly, her fingers sliding across the open book to grip the front cover as though to close it. As though she meant to get up and walk across the space to go to him. To comfort him. His brain shied from the idea before it could fully form, shoving it away on instinct.

He nodded once, pointedly, and the frown line eased. He turned back to his box of twine and wire and forced himself to focus on his task. The thinner gauge wire was running low; he was going to have to steal more from one or several of his neighbors tomorrow. He exhaled heavily, not enjoying the prospect of what would surely be a time-consuming hunt. The farmer's barn was the obvious first choice but there was no guarantee of finding the precise thing he was looking for in that mess. This wasn't to say Jason's own living and storing spaces were the picture of neatness, but they were his messes – he knew where everything was amidst what looked to be disorder. Someone else's messes were just plain different.

By the time he had determined what he needed to scrounge up, Whitney was curled up - foot still propped on the crate – buried under the quilt. Presuming she must be asleep, he crept quietly out through the tunnel and up into the house to wait out the night.

* * *

 **NOTES:**

My apologies for the delay - it's been a very busy month.

Other than that, all I'll say is shit's getting real.

Until next time!


	9. Madness

**Chapter 9  
** Madness

~/13/~

 **Day 22**

There was nothing quite like being in the woods; in a place where man might have walked, but had not marked in any way traceable to the eye. Nothing made her feel quite so at one with the world. Or quite so removed from it. It was simultaneously peaceful and melancholic; the kind of place where it would be easy to lose oneself - to let troubles and fears and worries slip away like so much grime.

Letting the book fall closed upon her lap, Whitney leaned against the trunk of the tree at her back, tipping her chin up to peer through the spaces between the limbs bursting with green. The bits of sky beyond were the perfect true blue that only came at the height of summer, unbroken by cloud. Which made for a day that had begun hot and only got hotter. She had been sweating already by the time Jason had brought her to the little glade, though she had been doing none of the work.

He had been kind enough to bring her outside for a few hours every day, settling her under a tree by the lake or at a shady spot in the less dense part of the woods to read while he went off to do whatever else he did besides resetting traps. Being outside without the freedom of movement, however, was just a different sort of a cage. The restlessness had been compounding with each day until she thought she might rattle out of her own skin. Still, light was pouring in from the end of that tunnel.

Due to what was likely a combination of good luck and decent genes Whitney had always seemed to heal relatively quickly. After four days of rest her ankle was still on the tender side, but it could hold her weight to stand and take a few steps so long as she did so conscientiously - and not a moment too soon.

For the second time since waking that morning, she lifted her right leg from where it stretched out upon the grass and carefully rotated the ankle joint, flexing her bare toes. Her shoes were back in the tunnel where they had been sitting by her bed, patiently waiting for the moment when she could wear them again. Being barefoot was pleasant enough, it being the height of summer and sweltering, but it did limit where she could go. Something which wasn't an issue when she was being carried around everywhere. Which was the other reason she wanted to get back to walking as soon as possible: her absolute hatred of feeling like an invalid.

She stretched again, pulling her toes straight back toward her torso. There was still a subtle pull of tension along the inner line of the Achilles, but no pain aside from that of unused muscles. One more day of rest would likely be all she needed. Thank god.

Sighing, she let her eyes drift closed. She didn't relish the idea of taking a nap out here, mostly because this was the middle of a wood and not a particularly amazing backyard. While it was true that Jason obviously felt it safe to leave her there - safe in ways that had nothing to do with the risk of her running off - she still thought it a good idea to stay awake and aware, if not alert. Still, her head and eyelids were getting heavy, a combination of the heat and her waning blood sugar. A nap sounded like a delightful idea, if an inadvisable one.

As if summoned by the hollow, not-quite-grumble of her stomach, Jason emerged from the brush with a faint rustling, a cloth-wrapped bundle in one hand that hadn't been there the hour or so ago when he'd left her.

Her belly squeezed slightly, which she blamed on the hunger even as she knew the one had nothing to do with the other. For if it did, this would have been the first and only time. She pointedly ignored it, shoving denial between it and her with all the force of a warrior's shield and not caring if it was overly dramatic to do so.

It was just...it was nothing. It _was._

"Hey," she greeted casually, biting down the reflex to ask the kind of simple follow-up questions she had been shaped to ask: such as _how did it go_ , or _how was everything_. She hadn't realized what effective tension relief such near-meaningless chunks of conversation could be until she no longer had them to fall back on. Which, she guessed, would have been an interesting social experiment to undertake if the subject hadn't been herself.

It had become something of a habit to give him a quick once-over whenever he came back from even normal daily excursions. She kept insisting to herself that she didn't want to know, yet she still scanned his clothes for new stains, his hands for flecks of blood, as though she couldn't help it.

There was something about death that was as alluring as it was off-putting: possibly because when someone came close enough to death to look it in the eye they were able to feel and appreciate their own life in a way they simply couldn't otherwise. Which was weird, because Whitney often felt like she had spent her last few years in a near constant proximity to death. Yet she really hadn't. Her life had been calm and safe, dangerous only in that there would always be risk in simply being alive. Mankind, it seemed, had lost something in the modern era with technology and the things which came alongside it increasing lifespans and quality of life and making the prospect of dying seem like a faraway maybe thing that mainly happened to other people - thereby making life seem almost...trivial as a result.

Or, equally possible, she was just morbid and fascinated in spite of also being squicked out by the idea of murder. She was fairly sure no one pursued and subsequently stuck with a career in healthcare without being a tiny bit morbid.

She hadn't seen any signs of killing on him since the infamous time of the headless dead body he'd dragged down into the tunnels. But that didn't mean he hadn't done it. And that made the other thing - the non-thing that she was absolutely not thinking about - all the more uncomfortable. Especially when her scan for blood lingered a little too long on the way the worn shirt draped the swell of his chest and she caught herself lamenting that no matter how hot it grew he never so much as removed his coat.

 _Stop it._

His hand was warm to the touch when he bent to help her up. She didn't know what she had once expected; stone, perhaps, or something just as cool and unforgiving. But as it had been then, his skin was only skin. Warm, with callus lining the palms and the tips of the fingers. A shade or so darker than it must normally have been due to the protective layer of dirt. His fingers closed around hers and she felt a soft, shivery unease at the base of her spine as she clambered to her feet – one which lessened only after he'd released her, proffering instead the lumpy bundle wrapped in blue gingham.

Not bothering to ask what it was, she balanced it on the flat surface of her book. Undoing the simple overhand knot that held the corners together and unfolded an end, revealing three fresh, ripe peaches and a whole loaf of bread still warm and fragrant as if it had just come from an oven.

Instantly she was wide awake, mouth pooling with anticipatory saliva. "Ohmygod," she blurted, lifting the entire bundle and burying her nose in the heavenly yeast-heavy smell of bread.

It occurred to her as she breathed in that he must have stolen the bread, at the very least, from someone's home, and that it was entirely possible he'd been seen doing so. A split second later it she decided that anyone close enough to fall victim to this precise theft likely knew to carry on as though nothing had happened, easing the flicker of worry that had just been starting to kindle.

"Thank you," she breathed on her exhale. He just shrugged; a nonchalant gesture that did not hide the soft gleam of his eyes behind the fiberglass shield. Pleased by the find, and perhaps by her enthusiasm.

He did seem to find a sort of strange satisfaction in her happiness. She wasn't sure what to make of that. It was easy to accept the possibility of loneliness built-up over decades, but the way he looked after her didn't feel like a child's attempts to mimic nurturing, maturity stunted by upheaval. He wasn't very childlike at all, except perhaps in those little moments of vulnerability. And yet hopelessness, insecurity, fear, mistrust...those weren't inherently childish qualities, it was simply that most boys - most men - didn't allow those things to show so freely and clearly. Or without shame. They weren't raised to do so; nor were they raised to be nurturing or to be caretakers.

In that moment it occurred to Whitney that maybe the reason it was rankling her so much to be immobile was partly because she was so accustomed to being the one doing the caring. Since her mom's diagnosis she had been the one keeping track of appointments, ensuring meals and medications were taken care of, and that had been for years now. Of course she liked to be able to walk around on her own, but she hadn't considered how much she had come to rely on being in control of her situation, or in just how many ways.

It was also the moment where she grasped something incredibly important. That Jason, having been alone since around the age of twelve, had had no outside influence in terms of how he grew up. _None._ No adults - parental or otherwise - dictating how he should act or think or feel, what things boys did or did not do. No other children to shove those things back in his face until he had no will other than to conform. No social standards molding and pressing him into a shape that might not truly fit. No social standards at all. He was purely himself in ways Clay or Mike or Richie had never had the chance to be, in ways _she_ had never been perhaps until now; trapped in the middle of nowhere, in a place she had never wanted to be in the first place.

She had been raised to regard men with caution that wasn't fair and wasn't right, but _was_ regardless, for reasons beyond her - or even their - control. Yet Jason...Jason might be the only man alive that had been in no way influenced by the things she had been conditioned to be wary of.

Holy crap. _That_ was something to unpack later.

When he made the open, one-armed reaching gesture she knew preceded being picked up, she stepped into it, allowing him to sweep her into the crook of his arm. It had become comfortable over the past four days. Well, as comfortable as something could when she itched with the dislike of feeling helpless and incapable. Still, it was almost second nature now to lean into the sturdy breadth of his shoulder, the quilted coat sleeve, no longer feeling she must hold on or else risk being dropped. There was no risk of that. The only problem was that the comfort of it had downsides. When she wasn't concentrating on clinging, she had the energy and brain power to focus on the fact that he could do this - just carry her around in one arm like it was no big deal when it really, really was.

She busied herself with eating, stuffing a hunk of bread in her mouth and making a whiny noise of pure delight; about seventy-percent sure she felt his chest dip with a silent laugh as he began walking. She ignored it. Which was a task considering she was literally nestled against said chest. He was just so goddamn _big_.

 _Oh my god, Whitney, knock it off._

When they reached the campground - stitched through with its flat, narrow dirt paths - she made a muted sound around her mouthful of food and tapped at his back.

"Put me down?" she requested and he did so, lowering her carefully until her feet met silty dry earth. "I'll walk the rest of the way."

Jason's masked face tilted down to examine her feet. She stood steadily, but she could see the hint of inquiry when his eyes lifted back to hers.

 _Are you sure?_

She nodded. "The muscle needs to be strengthened up again, and the best way to do that is with small chunks of movement between rest breaks."

Jason's head tilted to left in the angle she recognized as curiosity. She wasn't sure exactly what the source was, but she thought it might be her apparent knowledge of what to do for the injury. If this seemed strange to her it was only because she had assumed having lived out here on his own for so long he must have been injured once or twice, and therefore must have been able to figure out how to handle it. Or maybe he hadn't been. Maybe he was just so freaking sturdy that he never got hurt.

Odd or not, that wouldn't actually have surprised her.

Accepting this, he stepped aside, pointing to the path in indication that she should go first. It made sense; he wanted to keep an eye on her in case she tripped or took a bad step. The flat logic of it didn't make her feel like any less silly.

She started off down the path, keeping her steps small and cautious until she regained the rhythm. It was shockingly easy how fast something ingrained into physical memory could begin to feel strange. Walking after consecutive days of having not done so felt clumsy and ungainly at first, half of which was simply due to the fact that half her muscles had been recovering from trauma. She refrained from eating as she walked, which was a special kind of torture with the sunny sweet smell of the peaches pressing tauntingly at her nose. But as badly as she wanted one, she really didn't want to divert her focus and end up turning the other ankle.

While she couldn't see him, she could hear Jason matching her pace - quiet, padding footsteps, slow and unhurried. It felt strange not to be the one trailing in his wake, strange to have him behind her.

Something fluttered behind her breastbone, right at the bottom where it split into the lowermost ribs as though a tiny creature had gone scuttling into the space there. Abruptly, for no reason at all, Whitney experienced an almost hysterical urge to run - to dart off the path and conceal herself somewhere in the trees. It was a starkly prey-animal response, not unlike the moment when he'd caught her on that first mad-dash escape when she had felt the physical power of him against her and known that he could break her like a matchstick. The sharp, keen knowledge that there was a hunter at her back.

She dragged in a breath, forcing the impulse down. She was in no danger; she knew that - she _believed_ that. The automatic response to a threat as perceived by instinct was not really the issue here. She wasn't afraid he was going to hurt her.

She wasn't _afraid_ at all.

Sweat beaded at the nape of her neck, half the summer heat and half nerves. Her pulse was rising with every second, every step, her face either flushed or draining of its color she wasn't sure which. Her hands were trembling, and she adjusted her grip on the bundle, her fingernails biting into the tender skin of one of the peaches until it bled, juice dripping down the side of her hand.

She knew what this was. No one who had ever been a pre-teen with a crush – stiff and flushing and folded in on oneself at the first fleeting grasp of attraction – could _not_ know.

A hand closed about her upper arm, stopping her next step before she took it and sending her heart leaping straight into her throat. Bringing with it the smell of pine and leather, and salt. Her head snapped up, and if he noticed the flare of panic in her expression, he made no indication of it. He released her almost immediately, indicating she should alter her trajectory slightly and away from the detritus that spilled across the path: a glittering confetti of splintered wood and glass from a cabin's char-blackened skeleton. She swallowed thickly, trying to ignore the fact that her nose and mouth were full of the scent of him and failing spectacularly. Her nod was jerky and stiff, every muscle in her back and shoulders having coiled tight as springs, but she corrected as advised - stepping out onto the brittle, sun-browned grass to give the hazard a wide berth.

Guilt stung, followed swiftly by disgust.

What was _wrong_ with her? She was not a thirteen-year-old girl brand new to the alarming, too-adult world of desire and terrified of it. But holy shit did she feel like it, and that was all kinds of wrong.

This was the same man that had killed Mike - that would have killed her just as quickly, just as easily, and without a care. Like it was nothing. He had killed who knew how many people. Possibly hundreds. And yet here she was, freaking out over nearness and contact just like her pre-teen counterpart, a girl she hadn't been in years.

He was just...she didn't know what to call it. Every word she could think of seemed ridiculous and made the last lingering immature parts of herself - the parts that still felt secretive and shameful whenever indulging in the odd romance novel – want to snicker, embarrassed. Earthy. Primal. _Bestial._

Perhaps it was that he never spoke, the effortless silence in contrast to his mass, or the way he moved. Perhaps it was simply the size of him.

Jesus Christ, this was not ok.

It didn't take very long for her ankle to start complaining about the sudden onslaught of work she had demanded it do. She deliberately said nothing. If she complained he'd just pick her up again, and she very much did not want him touching her right now. She managed to make it all the way to the rundown little house without Jason noticing anything was wrong – or else simply trusting that whatever signs of pain she showed were to be expected and therefore nothing to be concerned with.

Sinking to the mattress in her corner was a definite relief or several kinds. Letting out a breath it felt she'd been holding for a solid twenty minutes she sagged against the rock wall, eyes drifting closed, bundle of bread and fruit cradled in her lap.

The gentle clank of chain interrupted her momentary calm. She blinked, craning her head to look and found Jason holding the manacles which had hung there from their ring, unused for the past four days.

Of course. She was walking again, mobile. And for all that she had promised not to, how could she truly expect him to believe her when she said she wouldn't try to run away again?

She couldn't.

To his credit, and quite possibly the sole reason she experienced not even the barest traces of resentment, he appeared to be hesitating, holding the cuffs in his great hands as though weighing them, as though he didn't really want to use them at all.

"It's ok."

He looked up at her, expression likely matching the blank surface of the mask for once, and she smiled. It was tight at her mouth, a mask of her own, but she held it, determined.

Sliding her hands free she extended them, palms up, expectant and offering.

"I haven't exactly been a model prisoner. I understand."

And she did, truly. But she wouldn't pretend that it didn't seem like an odd sort of backwards step to have the metal close about her wrists again. There were too many other things she was pretending not to be.

It was not an easy night.

She picked at the chili he'd brought for dinner, the beef and bean-ridden slop completely unappetizing. Choosing instead to stuff herself on peaches, she relished in the soft give of the fruit, the perfect ripeness measured in pinkish flesh and the precise flavor only the best peaches had. She ate two of them, tucking the third in a cool corner in the hopes of holding off rot at least overnight. It was in the midst of this that she discovered the feather tucked in the folds of the cloth: a beautiful creamy beige color, striped brown and quite large, likely having come from an owl. Another pretty thing to add to the growing collection atop her crate. Seeing it had inexplicably made her feel weird and weepy, and she'd set it aside out of sight to keep the compulsion at bay.

Getting to sleep was a tussle with blankets and a sore back, and several rather violent attempts to get comfortable when her body simply didn't want to do so. And when she did finally drift off, it wasn't for long.

In the middle of the night - somewhere around three or four in the morning, if she were to guess – she woke, abruptly and randomly as wide awake as though she had been shaken. She turned over, wondering if she's had too much to drink before bed and had to pee, and quite grumpy about it. But, no, that wasn't right. Having to pee never made her feel bloated…

Understanding blooming in the forefront of her brain.

Without a real calendar and the four-week countdown of her birth control packet she had lost track of time. Time, that was, within a very specific parameter; one she had greeted once a month every year since she'd been twelve. And without said birth control to help regulate it, the symptoms that had shown like clockwork for years had been knocked completely off-kilter to the point where she hadn't even recognized them.

Disinterest in heavy food, but a craving for sugar. Muscle aches, particularly in mid-back. Bloating. Irritability. The not-quite ache in her lower belly as though her uterus was inflamed – because it basically was.

Well shit, _no wonder_ she felt crazy, she was in a state of hormonal rage.

She sat up slowly, cautiously, taking stock. The bleeding hadn't started yet, that much she could tell. She had no idea what it was that made her able to sense in advance; some ethereal magic rooted in practical means. Whatever the cause, she knew she had only minutes at most until the uncontrollable, viscous rush.

She cast about her little space, searching for something she could use that wasn't either dirty or impractical – and found nothing.

 _Fucking hell…_

Not knowing what else to do, chest tight and hot with yet another threat of just as pointless tears, she tipped her head back and drew in a breath.

~/~

Light trickled in from the window, a pale and watery blue-gray puddle that grew wider and brighter as Jason watched it, waiting.

He hadn't slept - not that that was surprising, or new. The only reason he retired like this every night even while his need for sleep was now a rarity was simply because he didn't know what else to do. That was what one did at night: go to bed. It gave him a sense of normalcy he found comforting, a period of time each day which anchored him to the life he had once had regardless of whether he slept or not. So he came back to this spot every night to spend whatever hours were left until dawn broke - not altogether sure why he did it, not sure what else he would do instead.

Sometimes he closed his eyes and let his thoughts drift away, quiet and still in what might have been a form of meditation. Most of the time he simply lay there, curled in an awkward lump on the too-small bed, bear tucked in the crook of his arm. Such as tonight.

It was early morning now, when dawn was just a promise yet to come written in the lessening gloom. Too early to get up. Though he supposed it wouldn't have mattered if he did.

These past few weeks had been quiet: not another soul to be seen or heard aside from himself and Whitney, which was how he liked it. If he had his way there would never be people there. Not on the grounds or by the lake, or in the surrounding woods. If he'd had the ability and the freedom to do so without drawing unwanted attention, he would build a great fence along the borders of the land - one tall and broad enough to keep any and everyone out. True, this would make going out to swipe supplies more difficult, perhaps impossible. But Jason rather thought that a price worth paying if it meant being left alone. Truly alone.

Except he wasn't alone anymore.

The fence had been a fantasy for as long as he could remember since crawling out of the lakeside muck, ever as feasible as was plucking a star from the sky, yet he had held onto it nonetheless. Now, though, when he thought about the look on Whitney's face when he'd brought her the bread liberated from a neighbor's open kitchen window - the near-blinding elation at something so small, so easy - he wasn't sure he could still calculate the loss worthwhile.

He could almost feel her gaze on him, soft and absent any blame, and his chest tightened as though bound in iron.

" _It's ok,"_ she had said. _"I haven't exactly been a model prisoner."_

Prisoner.

She hadn't seen him wince, didn't realize the word had cut. That wasn't what she was, wasn't what he thought of her, and the inability to tell her so had churned in his stomach like sour milk right alongside the shame as he fastened the cuffs about her wrists anew. Shame he still felt, coiling and wormlike, uneasy in his gut. But then his nights were often full of such things.

He knew in terms of the universal logic of chance that the circumstances of his birth were not the fault of anyone. Yet sometimes - most often in the dark hours when purpose was overcome by stillness - the negative space he experienced in the place of rest or inaction would gradually fill up with guilt and loss and misery that he knew wasn't his to bear. He bore it anyway.

While being a child, and being somewhat slower than average, the details had evaded him. In spite of his state of extreme naivety, he had been more than vaguely aware that things had not been easy for his mother, though just how much of this had been because of him wasn't a question to which he would ever get the answer. All he knew was that she cried sometimes when she thought he was playing outside or in his room, where he wouldn't hear. Every time he did hear, he had been unable to imagine the cause being anything but him.

All he had wanted had been to be someone else, something - anything - else to make life easier for the woman who had loved him and cared for him in spite of every part of him that was wrong. Even her death somehow felt like his fault, even though logically he knew that wasn't so. Logic was rational, but emotion was not.

 _"Jason!"_

He lurched bolt upright, startled, the little bed groaning in complaint under him. For the space of a second he just sat there while his brain reeled, a leaf buffeted in a windstorm.

It wasn't that he had forgotten the girl settled under the floorboards beneath him – how could he, after all. It was simply that they had never interacted during the time between sundown and sunup before, time they had organically agreed was time best spent in solitude. And she had never _called_ for him before.

Swinging his legs to the floor he abandoned the bear to the bedding and raced for the trapdoor.

It hadn't been panic in her voice, but something just as urgent, and he couldn't imagine why she would yell for him like that unless something was wrong. Alarm spiked, causing him to yank harder at the handle than was necessary to open it. His stomach squeezed, heart thudding with a drumbeat that echoed in his ears, his throat, as he darted down the shallow decline and rounded the corner.

She was standing hunched slightly forward in the middle of her mattress, one hand pressed flat to her belly.

His entire body went cold as though his blood had been flushed with ice. Was she hurt? Sick? Fortunately, she was not inclined to wait for him to puzzle out how to translate these questions into gesticulation.

"I need to go to the bathroom," she said shortly, "or I need bandages. One of the two."

Alarm flashed like a beacon in his head. He might not have a grasp on the complexities of ankle injuries, but _bandages_ he understood quite plainly. She _was_ hurt.

"Now, please," Whitney added, seeming disproportionately calm considering she'd just said she needed bandages. Her tone was equal parts tired and irritated, but not panicked, nor afraid, leaving him more than a little confused.

He crossed the room to her, unlocking the cuffs at her proffered wrists, questions he could not ask bursting in a colorful chaos between his ears and mouth. There was no new injury that he could see, no blood, certainly nothing that would have required bandaging, yet she winced when she straightened up to walk, waving him off when he reached for her arm to help.

He ended up half dragging her to the outbuilding, her ankle still too weak to carry her the whole way. She was too stubborn to let him just pick her up and do it and the tension she radiated made him too anxious to override her decision for fear of making things worse. So they struggled, his worry ratcheting upwards with every second longer it took them to move.

An impressively foul word wrenched its way from between Whitney's teeth when they reached the cement steps. She clambered out of his arms before he could work out how to react and hobbled into the bathroom, leaving him to hover outside.

A light was flicked on and the harsh yellow glow pooled from the open doorway. The rustling of things being moved about reached his ears, cloth and plastic, the clatter of something metallic falling to the floor. He heard a sink begin to run, a shallow splashing. Jason's hands curled reflexively into fists. He didn't want to barge in if she didn't want him to, but he didn't like being out here, not knowing what was going on.

Did she need help? What if she needed help? Just because he didn't hear any retching didn't mean she wasn't sick. Should he go in? What should he do?

The flow of water stopped, paving the way for a silence that had him gritting his teeth.

There were weary circles under her eyes when she emerged a moment later to lean heavily against the doorframe. "Ok," she sighed, words limned with a mix of annoyance and relief, "crisis averted."

Jason just stared at her, nonplussed, unsure whether he should truly let go of the dread still gently fizzing in his bloodstream.

"Sorry if I was-if I startled you. Everything's all right. Just a biology thing."

He didn't need to see her reaction to know his blank look read loud and clear.

"Right," she mused, more to herself than to him, as if just remembering something. "Um...you know where babies come from, right?"

He frowned at her, hopelessly confused. What did babies have to do with being sick?

Whitney's face twisted as though it were being physically rent between laughter and a grimace. "Right," she repeated, passing a hand over her face. For a split second as she turned her head the aurora of light caught in her hair, causing it to blaze coppery red. "Well, let's just say that every month I get a sort of-internal wound. Kind of. I bleed for a couple days and need bandaging like I would for a cut."

His pulse kicked hard at the word _bleed._ His eyes must have widened with the spark of dismay, for immediately she held out a placating hand.

"I'm not hurt, and I'm not in pain," she soothed. "Not really. It'll stop on its own in a few days."

Her exhale was weighted with something he couldn't identify, her brow creasing as though with the pain she claimed not to have.

"I promise everything's ok. I just want to go back to bed now."

There was surely skepticism in the look he shot her. There must be, for although the puzzlement and worry were louder, there was just enough room for a dash of disbelief. He was well acquainted with blood and knew what its presence meant. Still, she wasn't pale the way she would have been were she suffering from the loss of too much, and he could see nothing on her clothes or the floor. She just seemed tired. He supposed he had no choice but to trust her.

He reached on impulse, his hand finding hers and closing around it. He hadn't meant to do it, it had simply happened, as though his arm had acted of its own will. Her eyes went wide, spots of color burning high at her cheeks, but she didn't pull away as he thought she might. Nor did she refuse when he bent to hoist her up, instead settling against him as she had come to, arm folded over the slope of his shoulder and her knees against his ribs. He caught the blood then, if only faintly – the hot, salty-metallic tang of it warped and curled around some other scent he didn't recognize – and made the determined effort not to react.

He forwent retreating to his own bed, pointless as it would have been. He arranged himself on the workbench stool as she curled up in her corner and tipped almost instantly into sleep, situating himself nearby so he could keep watch, just in case.

~/~

 **Day 24**

"Can I try?"

Whitney sank to her knees amidst the carpet of dry fir needles next to Jason. He looked up from the coil of wire he'd been unspooling, regarding her over his pliers while the question hovered in the air between them.

Chances were he was surprised she'd spoken at all after two days of near-silence. Truth be told she felt more than a little bad about it. She wasn't the nicest when menstruating on a good month, let alone when a lack of prescription was messing around with her symptoms and making her cramp up more than she ever normally did.

She'd wanted ibuprofen and a heating pad and ice cream with enough chocolate to turn her arteries to solid candy, but while she had kept her mouth shut knowing there was nothing to be done about it, she had still been sullen and unpleasant. He wouldn't have understood her silent treatment any more than he would have if she'd been a raging bitch. She'd flat out refused to stay outside longer than it took to pee and to change tampons – because of course the girl with the bathroom supplies would have had only tampons and nothing else, and yes Whitney was well aware she should be grateful, but damn it she _loathed_ tampons – just for this reason. Because there was no reason she should make his days any more of a drag than she absolutely had to.

After a moment he gave in and offered the pliers with a fluid turn of his wrist. She took them, and he let her carry on unwinding wire for a new snare.

"So," she began, feeling his eyes on her downturned face, "I owe you an apology."

Being occupied by clipping the wire she didn't see if he reacted. She would have bet not. He'd be waiting for whatever followed before he decided what to think about it.

"For being weird the past couple days."

His hand came into view, offering a thin sliver of raw metal to shape into a clamp.

"It wasn't about you or—or anything, and I didn't mean to be rude or…" she stopped herself before falling back on the old standby. _Bitchy._

If he knew the word, if he knew what it meant, it would only be in its more literal form which would only confuse him. He wouldn't understand what she was saying. And frankly, she had always hated the term, hated the power it had to belittle, to silence, to make insignificant. To turn legitimate feeling into something paltry and unworthy of being taken seriously.

"I've just been cranky and off. It's part of the monthly bleeding thing. Hormones get crazy and there's too much testosterone and my organs are having a temper tantrum and—"

She had glanced up in the middle of shaping the end of the wire into a loop just in time to see his head tilt. He was still watching her face, seemingly raptly focused on what she said, and while she knew she'd slipped into using words he wouldn't know she had the impression that the puzzlement there wasn't based in that. Again she got the feeling that he was curious about how she knew things like this, how to care for a sprained joint or a bleeding uterus. When she thought it about it, such knowledge might seem expansive and impressive to someone who simply didn't have a basis for comparison.

"I'm… studying to be a nurse," she explained, "someone that helps other people when they're sick or hurt. I haven't taken my test yet, but I do know a lot about bodies and how they work."

The steely blue of his eyes sparked with fascination. He was brimming with questions - she could tell just by the subtle kinetic buzz of energy he exuded, genuine and infectious - and wished she had the power to read them, wished he had a way to write them down.

Well, she might not be able to answer the exact questions, but she could still talk in the hopes of hitting some. So she did.

She told him stories from school and from the clinic, probably committing a number of HIPPA violations and not giving half a damn while he guided her through the process of bending the bit of metal into place – something significantly more difficult than it looked.

They moved on down the deer trail and she told him about her draw toward the raw mechanics of the body; the intricate ways each system functioned alongside all the others, the near-magical ways it could heal itself, rework itself. She talked about the reward of easing pain, all the things that ceased to disgust her when they should have – as well as the things that made her skin crawl and her gag reflex engage – making up for the time she had spent in self-pitying quiet all while he listened. And _listened._

Whitney had to give him that – he was an incredibly good listener. In spite of the fact that he couldn't have interrupted with words of his own, he had the uncanny ability to make his attention felt as though it were a kind of force he could direct as surely as his stride, and he never gave the impression that he was doing so out of obligation. He kept pace next to her, listening to her nerd out about the different kinds of suture as though it were the most interesting thing on the face of the earth, and he did so because he wanted to.

Mike had been a listener too. He had seemed to think her inclination toward school and books and her affinity for anatomy was intriguing, and even sexy; but he'd never listened like this, without any motive behind it but to learn. Just for its own sake.

Was it appropriate to be comparing her kidnapper with her dead boyfriend?

She cringed internally, and changed the subject.

"How old are you? Do you know?"

Tipping her chin she peered up at him. He seemed to be contemplating the question, trying to calculate the years. A moment later he shook his head.

"What about the year you were born?"

At this he stopped, crouching where he stood while simultaneously drawing the knife from his belt. Carefully, as though calling up half-remembered motions, he etched the tip of the blade against the ground, sketching four painstakingly neat numbers into the packed earth.

"You have beautiful handwriting," she praised, although whether it was still handwriting when not executed with a utensil meant for the task was debatable. The numbers were straight and even, possibly from having been practiced over and over until they stuck, but also likely because he was accustomed to and skillful with small delicate detail work. Even while using a tool intended to gut and skin things.

He gave a little half-shrug as he rose that she might have called bashful if she didn't know better.

 _1973_

"It's 2009 now," she mused, doing the calculation in her head, "which makes you—thirty-six."

That was only seven years older than she was. Funny, she'd assumed he must be older, though she couldn't put together why that was. Unless it had just been that she hadn't been able to frame him in such human terms as age, mythic monster of local legend that he was supposed to be, and all.

There was a soft tap at her shoulder and she blinked back the surreal sense this bit of knowledge gave her to see him gesture to her.

He had an odd way of pointing, she had noticed: using both index and middle fingers rather than just the one. It softened what was otherwise an almost confrontational action, especially when he used it to refer to her.

"How old am I?" she clarified, and he nodded. "Twenty-nine."

Jason's eyes creased at the corners, glinting with amusement and…mischief? He extended a hand, holding it parallel to the ground and lowering it slightly.

"Hey— _hey!_ " she cried in indignation that did nothing to hide her astonished laugh. "Excuse you, I am not little. I'll be thirty in September."

He lowered his hand by another inch and she rolled her eyes.

"Ok, fine, I'm little. But only compared to you, you freaking moose. Are you naturally this much of a pain in the ass or do you work at it?"

Jason's shoulders shook with a soft huff of near-silent laughter.

"Oh, shut up," she snapped playfully, turning her back and continuing down the trail.

With every step she took the stranger she felt, becoming more and more disturbed by the gentle teasing they'd just shared. The ease of it.

She had no business being this way, no business being so calm and casual. They weren't friends. They weren't _anything._ She couldn't allow herself to forget that, even for the sake of her own emotional wellbeing. If she did then she was nothing but what everyone would call her, authorities, doctors, and the public alike: just another victim so grateful for any scrap of kindness that it didn't matter what abuses she had suffered. Of course she wouldn't be blamed. It wasn't her fault, after all, she had only done what she must to in order to survive. But life wasn't that simple, and she wasn't sure whether that was all she was doing. And knowing that felt like swallowing sand rather than the castor oil it was supposed to be.

They were just coming to a rocky stretch of terrain, one which climbed sharply and steeply up into the foothills. She was preparing to veer to the left and back down into the trees like they usually did when the shape moved in front of her. Her face lifted on instinct, focus narrowing in on the source of motion – the sleek, slinking tawny form of the mountain lion – and she actually felt her own thoughts grind to a halt as she froze.

The big cat seemed to follow suit, long body held low to the ground and coiled tight with latent energy as though caught mid-spring to the rocks. It stared at her out of wide, round eyes rimmed with black, at once wary and intent. Round ears folded backward, flattening against its skull as it crouched lower still.

Lips curled back from teeth like knives: fear, perhaps and a threat. And not one idly meant.

Automatically she tried to retreat, thinking to offer the animal space, her right foot – still not quite fully recovered - dragging against the scree as she stepped back and a low, guttural growl reached her ears.

Half a second passed – half a second spent in bated breath and the first flush of terror. Then she felt something brush past her, felt the hand curve around her side to shove her back. Her vision filled with Jason's back, her world reduced to dull gray-brown quilting and the ghostly rasp of a great cat's warning hiss.

Metal slid across leather binding and the machete came free, glinting bright with promise, and her throat locked. Her fingers gripped the back of his coat, curling around a fistful of fabric and threatening to add another tear to his collection. The wall of his back was solid as granite, the muscle in his arm - in the hand still splayed across her ribs – gone still and hard as though it had ceased to be mere flesh at all. Yet even then, though she was far from the forefront of his focus, he was very aware of his own strength; as aware of it as she was aware of her own breakability. Though he himself seemed to become as stone, his grip on her didn't tighten. He just held her there, waiting. And there she stayed, not sure she had ever felt as safe as she did in that exact moment, because if any man could take on a fucking mountain lion it was this one.

For an agonizing few moments there was nothing - just a silence broken by her own shuddering breath. Just when she thought she might combust from of the stress of not knowing there was a muted scrabble of claws on rock, the lion evidently having decided against picking a fight and fleeing into the rocks, and Jason's torso contracted, releasing a breath of his own.

Turns out Wade had been right all along about the predators in the woods. Just not about this particular one. Jason Voorhees, terror of mountain lions.

She snorted, half adrenaline and half hysteria.

And he had protected her, for some odd reason, as though it mattered to him whether she lived or not. As though she were important not simply as an asset, or an investment. As though she was…

The hand at her side relaxed, wide palm softening. His thumb slid against her ever so slightly, more twitch than anything else, neither intended nor meaningful, but Whitney stiffened as though she'd been scalded, startled by the rush of warmth that spread from it. She wasn't quick enough to divert it, dazed by the speed with which everything had happened, wasn't quick enough to stomp it out before it had a chance to kindle. Wasn't quick enough to keep from wondering what it would have felt like to have that hand on her bare skin.

She jerked backward and out of reach – too late to stop it. Too late to keep her brain from reverting to something ancient and instinctive and completely beyond controlling.

He turned, the movement silk smooth, almost hypnotic, and her insides _shuddered._

What the _fuck_ was _happening?_

Whitney wasn't disturbed by attraction for its own sake. She was practically-minded in addition to being a closet romantic, and she was not the kind of person to turn her face from nature. She was a sexual being and she liked boys. But she had never really thought overmuch about sex. Oh she liked it well enough, it just hadn't ever been a priority in itself. It had never been a driving force in her life, never been something she couldn't just put out of mind when there were other, more important things to focus on, and she had never once in her life looked at a boy and found herself considering his potential as a mate. She had no experience with that - with the part of her mind currently declaring that this man would take care of her, whether she were healthy or sick or injured. Or pregnant.

 _Whoa._

Some defensive shield in her mind slammed down, separating her and an idea far too disturbing to handle just then.

Jason was staring at her, eyes narrowed slightly in a way that was at once cautious question and concern bordering on the edge of unease. It was clearly a request for assurance, because clearly she was not all right and he wouldn't know why. _Couldn't_ know why.

Could never, _ever_ know why.

Winded, horrified, Whitney took a breath that burned like swallowing a mouthful of cinders, and forced her face into what felt like a normal expression that convinced neither of them.

"Sorry," she tried, half choking on the word that did not want to be spoken. "Um-this way, right?"

She didn't wait for an answer, just barreled headlong into the trees, needing distance and space and just wanting to throw back her head and scream until she stripped her own voice. But she still felt his hand there, broad and heavy and too warm against her side; felt it as though it had pressed through her too-big shirt to brand her underneath. Felt it all the way back down the trap line as she fidgeted every time he glanced her way and pretended she wasn't a nanosecond away from losing her shit.

What shit? Did she have shit to lose if she was thinking about this? If she wanted… _No._ That wasn't a path she was ready to follow. Not now, not today. Not while he was three yards away and watching her like he was waiting for her to shatter. Which she very well might.

Jesus Christ, she didn't even _want_ kids. But hormones didn't care about insignificant things like that. All hormones cared about was finding the biggest, most dangerous thing there was and doing whatever it took to convince that thing to stay with them, provide for them, keep them safe. And if that meant jumping its bones so much the better.

What the fuck. _What the fuck!_

Jason seemed to gather that she was in desperate need of space and time in her own company, for which she was immeasurably grateful. She curled up in a tight little ball with her back wedged in the corner, pressing herself into the metal mesh panel as if she hoped to override the remembered sensation of touch with its pattern.

Trembling, body shaking as though to tear itself apart, she pressed her face against the cool rock wall and dug her fingers into the raw, jagged marks she had made there as she cried until she thought she might vomit.

When had this become tolerable? When had this hell stopped feeling like a hell? At exactly what point had she lost her goddamn mind?

By the time she calmed down enough to think she had ricocheted to a state of over-logical apathy. Nature was strange and humans were no exception; weird water-based creatures that they were, full of chemicals that simultaneously clashed and coincided. She could accept discovering that deep down the sheer strangeness of her circumstances had unearthed the deep-set primordial cavewoman parts of herself. She could accept that apparently she hadn't favored lean, slender men as much as she'd thought. But she could not accept that she couldn't tell how much was real and how much was that she was cracking under the strain of being in this place.

She could not. Would not.

* * *

 **NOTES:**

Holy shit.

This chapter basically wrote itself. I fought it a little in the beginning, but clearly this is the way it wants to be written, and as this is the part of the story I had the least prior planning detail-wise, I went with it. And it felt awesome. I haven't written like this in a while. That said, I've got a lot of notes. Soooo…here goes.

My background and primary focus as an epic fantasy romance writer is truly shining through in this chapter, for better and worse. If anyone was unsure as to why I labeled this primarily as a romance, I hope the why is becoming clear, and if that's not your jam…seriously, jump ship now. It's only going to get worse. Bring on the rapid-escalation angsty pining, baby. And aaaaaaaaaaalll the ridiculous metaphors.

I fully realize the likelihood that Jason would have gone around swiping bread from unsuspecting neighbors is basically nil. But I liked the image, so it's in here. Shh.

Also yeah, there is absolutely pointed social commentary here. Yes, I'm talking about patriarchal structure and yes, one of the things I find most fascinating about Jason as a character is the relative blank slate he would be in a lot of ways. I'm projecting a lot into Whitney in regards to this, but as a woman that is painfully aware of and affected by this shit daily, I'm fine with that. It's important, so I'm writing about it.

Actually, now that I think about it, this chapter took quite a turn into the LET'S TALK ABOUT LADY ISSUES department. Like how sex is weird when you first learn about it, but once you start actually feeling shit it's fucking terrifying. I don't know if that's universal or not, but I know for certain that there is a definite slant to it when you're female. And HIIIIIII LET'S TALK ABOUT PERIODS. Because film cannon says she was down there for SIX FUCKING WEEKS and it was just not an issue? OK THEN. Nope. Periods are a thing and they're awful and uncomfortable and THEY FUCKING HAPPEN. Also, birth control. And the term "bitchy."

If anyone doesn't know, HIPPA is American legislation regarding medical privacy. Used here in reference to talking about specific patients/cases outside of the professional setting.

I messed around with Jason's birthdate and age here. In the remake canon his birthdate is listed as 1969, which would make him 40 if we use 2009 as present time. As I can't see Whitney being much older than a med student and therefore in later parts of post-college kind of schooling, which would put her around my own age which is not quite 30. Now, all things considered, 10 years difference isn't awful. Buuuuuuuuuuut…I've aged him down a couple years just to ease my conscience a little bit. I'm also taking liberties with what things he does and doesn't know and/or can and cannot do insofar as the "mental handicaps" are concerned, but I have since the beginning. Just go with it.

The mountain lion part is pure self-fanservice and I don't give a fuck. Come at me.

I'm still debating whether or not I'm going to fill the entire canon six weeks or whether I'm going to shorten it. We're just going to have to see what happens.

And I think that's it… XD thanks for reading my babble.

Also: to everyone who left comments and have decided to follow this beast, my sincerest gratitude. I would write this anyway, but it absolutely makes me happy to see others getting something out of it too. Thank you so much. I adore you.

Until next time!


	10. Terrible Thing

**CHAPTER 10  
** Terrible Thing

~/13/~

 **Day 25**

He must have done something. Jason could think of no other reason why Whitney was acting the way she was.

She had been talking again; laughing in response to his playfully deeming her young and small. Which she was, though one slightly more literally than the other which was mostly in jest. He had thought she was teasing back – if the moose comment was any indication - and the lighthearted swipes she'd made had sent tendrils of pleasant warmth to coil within his chest. Everything had been fine. Until it hadn't been.

He'd been following a short distance behind her, watching as she walked. He wasn't sure why in retrospect, since her injury had almost fully healed, but he remembered being rather fascinated by the way she moved.

He was vaguely familiar with the idea that male and female bodies utilized motion differently – they were _physically_ different, after all, in frame and shape, size and strength ratios. It was a thing he knew but had never really considered beyond the general acknowledgement. He'd never left anyone alive long enough to study such things. But he'd found himself doing just that: tracing her steps, the subtle caution in them, as though she were subliminally trying not to disturb the peace around her.

Whitney, being female, simply didn't move the way he did. The baggy shirt had eliminated all but the occasional hint of the shape underneath from shoulders to mid-thigh; something he disliked rather more than completely made sense to him. Still, he could trace the sleek lines of her legs as she went; the graceful, sloping transition from thighs to calves and down to slim ankles. There was a subtle sway to her walk centering in the hips which softened each step she took, turning it into something flowing and smooth, not unlike water or song translated to movement and quite unlike the rigid pattern of his own stride. Everything about her was soft, he'd thought; soft and curving and strangely captivating.

He remembered at the time feeling somewhat over-warm, which had been odd enough to distract him. He couldn't recall the last time he had felt truly hot or cold. He sweated, or course, suffered gooseflesh; his body was still flesh and behaved as such, but temperature hadn't affected him since his emergence. Yet he had been starting to feel the almost suffocating sensation of being overheated - the weight of his normally comfortable clothes too much, too close, too constrictive. He hadn't been sweating, though, just...too warm. He had just been wondering whether he should shrug out of his coat when he'd heard the growl.

Dread chased on the heels of his surprise. Of all the animals that dwelt in these woods it was cats of which he was most wary. Even bears were relatively easy to deal with, but the mountain lions could be difficult to predict, most especially when startled. He had the scars to prove it. And Whitney...

Whitney was well within leaping distance.

He had burst into motion, one hand falling to rest upon the machete's hilt while the other snared her around the middle, drawing her backward with the same swift stride he took to insert himself in front of her. She had been almost fever-hot beneath his hand, a supple weight against his back where he'd pressed her flush against him. He had felt the thready race of her breath, the rapid swell and collapse of her lungs beneath bone and flesh and flannel where his palm curved with the shape of her waist, had felt her grip his coat, her sharp intake of breath when he'd freed the blade at his side. The cat's lips had drawn back, teeth bared. It had made the threat to strike, stiff forepaw lifted slightly as though debating whether it was better to fight or flee, and he wasn't certain what made the beast decide to back down, nor had he cared. He had cared only about the girl behind him – the girl that had abruptly shoved herself out of his grasp with a sound like a kitten being strangled. He'd turned around to see her face gone white as death, her bright eyes burning into him with all the fear he hadn't seen since dragging a corpse through the tunnels.

After that it was like the easy conversation of before had never been, as though they had not just laughed together. She was distant, apart, as though she had become separated from him by some sheer, impenetrable barrier he couldn't see, fidgeting and wound so tight that he very seriously wondered whether she was going to twist herself into pieces, and he had no idea what had caused it. She had taken to wearing a mask of her own: wielding false, stunted smiles as if to pretend there was nothing wrong. As if he couldn't tell the difference.

Two days interspersed with wary, panicked looks he couldn't explain. Of words spoken only in need, in terms of _yes_ and _no_ and _thank yous_ graciously given but that set his teeth on edge. Twice he caught the gasping, shuddering sounds of crying and found her face stained glossy with the stains of tears she stubbornly refused to acknowledge. Each time he asked, in his way, and while he knew there was something to be desired in simply indicating the remnants and expecting her to understand, he knew full well that she did. She was not so cruel as to feign ignorance, but nor did she answer. She would only force her mouth into a brittle, wheat-paste curve that in no way reached her eyes and insist she was all right, and no matter how many skeptical, disbelieving stares he pinned her with she never budged.

He didn't understand it. She hadn't been hurt, he'd made sure of that. He could have understood being frightened by the cat, even afterwards, but he was far too familiar with being the source of fear to mistake the direction of hers.

It bothered him. Fiercely. It bothered him that he couldn't ask and therefore couldn't fix it, and it bothered him to be so troubled by it. Her actions, her misery, were her choice. She had no obligation to answer him, no obligation to _be_ all right let alone to act it. She owed him nothing. He should have shrugged it off and let her be. But he just couldn't shake it. He couldn't let it go. Even as he went on his rounds, sun beating down like a punishment, he kept turning it obsessively over in his mind - the same cycle of questions over and over until he thought he might go mad. What had happened? What had he done to push her back into such a state? Why wouldn't she tell him?

Technically, he had already been on rounds early that morning, but he'd had to move - had to put distance between himself and the girl at the root of his temporary insanity. He'd cut their walk short, brought her back, and promptly left, finding he simply couldn't stand to be so close to her when all he could see or feel was how wrong everything was. He couldn't stand to be near her when all he wanted to do was _fix_ it, for things to go back to the way they had been - comfortable, easy - wanted her to say what was bothering her rather than concealing it up behind the bland, meaningless lie of _fine._

Oh, how he had come to detest that word. He hated the way she used it as if she was deflecting a blow, as though every questioning look he sent her was an attack. It made him want to grab her by the shoulders and shake her until she dropped the pretense. Until she did something, anything, _real_ even if it meant having to swallow the fear he could thus far only taste. He hated that he kept allowing her to lull him into thinking she was content and happy until something he couldn't see ripped it apart to leave him standing in a crater of confusion and…hurt.

The instant it came to him he rejected it, casting the word from his mind like a venomous snake. He was _not_ hurt. She didn't have that power. He refused to grant her that power. It was merely that her unpredictability was wearing on him, leading to agitation. That was all.

It had to be.

But frustration still slithered hot and blistering between his organs no matter what he told himself.

He paused in his examination of a broken branch, fingers stilling mid-measure of splintered bark and mind stilling mid-fervent thoughts. Had he heard something? He thought he had, but sound could carry strangely with so many obstacles in between. He listened, motionless, waiting, and it came again. A low, broken murmur of voices.

People.

Jason had never been anything but coolly wrathful upon hearing human noise in his territory, but today he was downright relieved. Which was in of itself alarming. Was he truly in such dire need of a distraction? Well…not so much a distraction as an outlet, something onto which he could unleash his frustration. And the answer was yes. Yes, he was.

Still alarming.

They weren't difficult to find. He tracked them by sound alone to a clearing on the other side of the lake. There were three of them: two male and a female laughing and yelling and drinking from brown glass bottles as they slowly set up a pair of tents. A task they would never get to finish.

He didn't pause to study them a while first as he usually would have done. He simply strode into the clearing, seized one of the young men by the back of the head and slammed him into a tree. He could feel the skull give beneath his hand, long-solidified bone seams splitting like those in a plastic globe, and Jason knew the man was dead before he slumped to the dirt. Satisfaction surged in his blood, all brimstone and the icy calm of vengeance appeased.

" _Jesus-!_ "

The word was punctuated by a scream, shrill and scraping like metal upon glass. Jason's jaw clenched, eyes narrowing against the sound as he turned on the remaining pair.

The other man had bolted: a flailing, crashing shape in the brush. But the woman dove instead for the tangle of bags and tent equipment scattered across the ground, a small hatchet gleaming in one hand when she straightened. Clutching it between her hands she hurled it with a grunt, aiming wide if she even aimed at all. He caught it midair, fingers closing at the base of the metal and flipping it with the easy confidence of someone far more accustomed to the handling of such tools.

When he threw, he did not miss. She lurched; one step, then two steps sideways, peering wide-eyed down at the blade buried deep in her chest, splintering sternum. A tiny garbled wheeze slipping from her as she sank to her knees, indicating a punctured lung. Blood followed, trickling along the corner of her mouth. It would be an agonizing death, drowning in her own blood with her chest collapsing upon itself. Jason freed the machete from its straps as he went to her, gripping her by the chin and slitting her throat with a delicate slide of the blade to ease her passing. She slumped, the last traces of light slipping from her eyes, and he shifted his attention to the runner.

Judging from the frenzied sounds the man was making he was bound to exhaust himself sooner rather than later. Jason knew just from listening that he could catch the idiot with little to no fuss by simply following at a walk. But he didn't want an easy kill. He didn't want to wait and stalk from the shadows. He wanted fuss. He wanted blood.

And so he gave chase.

The man was slim, reedy, and by all laws of nature should have been as slippery as a weasel. Terror made him a staggering, blundering mess. Poisoned with adrenaline, he charged blindly through brush and foliage, tripping over every rock and rise in the ground. He seemed to realize that escape was out of reach; that Jason was significantly faster and that even at his best his hope would have been in the negatives. He was simply acting out his death throes before they reached him.

It took almost no time at all to gain, to get close enough to see the darting flash of the whites of the man's eyes as he glanced back over one shoulder. Whatever he saw seemed enough to crumble whatever last remnants of coordination his body possessed for his foot caught on seemingly nothing at all to send him crashing to the dirt and moss in an ungainly, flail.

There was a space of seconds during which time slowed, when the man wrestled himself onto his back and dragged his own weight along the ground as if the action would buy him still one more breath, lifting a hand as if imploring.

Jason's body slowed of its own accord, something about the posture, the hand raised in supplication was familiar…

"Don't," the man whimpered, voice hoarse and trembling nearly as much as the rest of him. " _Please-don't_ kill me-!"

That was all it took to destroy the delicate thread of hesitation: words spoken as though they had the power to subdue or divert him, speaking as though somehow, in some way, words could change anything. As though words could mend that which was broken. That was what people did. They poisoned and destroyed everything around them, and when he came to settle the score they pleaded, wheedled, and reasoned as though they were on even footing. What they could never seem to understand was that he was not their equal, that there was no negotiating. The damage was done and the tithe must be paid.

Jason bore down on his prey and the man's face paled somehow still farther in realization – recognizing the shape of his own death. The scream was just starting to form, a kindling flame, but with a single smooth thrust Jason shoved the end of the machete through the offending throat before it could emerge, reducing it to a fading gurgle.

With a twist of his hand, Jason wrenched the blade free, turning the clean cut into a ragged, open gouge. Blood spurted sluggishly in the absence of the metal, but the eyes of the dying man were already glassy and blank, feeling nothing. Unlike his killer.

For Jason had remembered where he had seen that raised, warding hand before, the body hunched and inwardly curled, cowering at his feet. The white face drawn and bleached of color, peering up at him with eyes wide as dinner plates. He could still remember the sound of her screams, high and sharp and wracked with her terror. _He_ had done that. He had never before felt shame in the things he had done, necessary, righteous as they had always felt. But looking back on it now he was ashamed of that.

 _"_ _No-don't touch me!"_

For the briefest instant corpse upon the earth bore Whitney's face, slender and finely boned, her gold and green eyes. For an instant, he stood frozen, unable to banish the sudden image of his hands – his blades – on her, punishing and in anger.

His stomach heaved, twisting as though to reject contents it didn't carry, useless nausea squeezing unhappily at the back of his throat. The wrath at the new trespass broke like a fever, dissipating from blood and muscle tissue to leave him bone-weary and nearly lightheaded. He hadn't done it - he _wouldn't._ Not now. Yet it took him a moment to identify it as true. Suddenly all he could think of was the way she had been shying from him every time he touched her lately: her breath catching in her throat as if it might strangle her, her heartbeat spiking. The way she had torn herself from his grasp, backed away and out of reach. Her eyes round and wide as if she had once again become a prey thing.

Had it…had it been the way he'd _touched_ her? That had been a reflexive thing and done with the intent to keep her safe, but clearly it had frightened her.

He didn't know when precisely the promise had been made, but he'd sworn to himself that he would never again touch her in temper. It wasn't about any fear that he would hurt her, he was far too controlled for a slip like that. It was a matter of principle. He didn't have the right to once he'd given her back her life. But she couldn't know that. All she had were the cues he gave, and something about his handling of her must have reminded her that she had every reason to keep her distance.

For a moment, this seemed to be the answer, and he felt satisfied in that knowledge until he realized how very little it actually resolved. It didn't actually make sense. Whitney was clever; she could follow his sad attempts at communication far better than he ever could have expected, far better than he could have had their roles been reversed. Even if startled, he simply couldn't believe she wouldn't see that handling her roughly had only been a result of seeing to her safety.

If there was a part of her that truly thought he still retained the will or capacity to hurt her she would not have grown so comfortable instigating touch the way she had in the time he'd spent as her crutch. She would not have so easily reached for his forearm to brace herself, nor so calmly allowed him to carry her for the distances he had. At first she might have been tense and a bit awkward, but by the time she healed she had come to be at ease there, balanced against his shoulder. He was certain of it. It made no sense that she would forget about it entirely the instant something unexpected happened. No, there was something he was missing - something outside the expanse of his knowledge. Maybe it had nothing to do with him beyond that first initial moment. Maybe he was reading far too deeply into it than was necessary.

Still, of one thing he could be sure. She was unhappy and he didn't like it.

He considered this as he tossed the limp, bleeding body over a shoulder and toted it back to the would-be campsite. Whether there were amends to make or no, he needed to find something to bring the real smiles back, the laughter, the way the bread had done. Could he do that again? It would probably be unwise to steal from the same house so quickly. His occasional payments taken in supplies or fuel were begrudgingly tolerated in trade for being allowed to share - and briefly cross - the borders, and for remaining otherwise left alone. But if he pushed them, took too much too often there was a chance of drawing more or outside attention. Even knowing this he hesitated no longer than a moment before deciding. The calculation weighed the possibility of seeing a genuine smile higher than the risk.

The body met the ground with a hearty thud as he shrugged it off. He dragged it by the arm the rest of the way to a clump of dense brush where the local coyotes often gathered during their nightly runs. He did the same with the other two, piling them loosely together to await their fate of being scented out and eaten. In a few days he would circle back to the spot and bury whatever remained. It would be messy and unpleasant, still it was a considerably easier form of disposal, and one he could only utilize out here in the denser sections where there was little chance of discovery.

Besides, spending less time on body disposal would allow him to get on with the rest of his errands more quickly, and, subsequently, back to Whitney.

In spite of the tension of the past few days he had found himself increasingly disinclined to stray from her for too long, which he could neither fully make sense of nor explain. The only thing he had to compare it to was the hollow, sinking dread he'd felt when he had discovered her gone - and even that didn't really come close. It was as though he simply didn't want to be away from her without any real, solid reason to provide a framework for the want, which was all manner of illogical. She was nothing to him...but clearly that couldn't be true. Such strong responses to loss didn't come out of nothing, and the response to track down and bring an errant girl anywhere but to her death was nothing if not strong. To say nothing of actively _protecting_ her. And yet he had done both. What did that mean?

He had no idea, and the not knowing disturbed things like a quake disturbed the earth. Soundly, and irrevocably, and in ways he didn't know how to process.

Jason set to work on the litter of bags and equipment the campers had brought, sorting through what to keep and what to hide. Things that might have been left by virtue of absentmindedness he could leave and feel relatively secure. The possessions of the occasional singular passerby he could bury with the confidence they would go undiscovered. With so much baggage, however he didn't feel it entirely safe to leave it. He would have to haul a good deal of it back to the crawlspace, add it to the hoard of things down there that would never be used. First, though, he went through the lot of it for things that he might be able to utilize.

One entire duffel bag was full of food - or, rather, what he supposed must be food considering the packaging. Big crinkly bags that were airy light and full of things that rattled when shaken, more of the thin brown glass bottles, still sealed, plastic multi-colored packages containing cylindrical sleeves of what looked like crackers and of chemicals. Somehow, in spite of the appearance, Jason suspected that while technically edible the things there might not actually be considered food where the matter of sustenance was concerned. Still, he set them aside to bring back with him. Another two bags were full of clothing, which he also habitually made to set aside before he reconsidered.

Undoing the snaps, he rifled through the contents, examining a pair of pants not unlike the ones Whitney had been wearing when he had found her. Another pair with the legs cut off, the wounds fraying white. Several shirts far smaller than the oversize plaid thing he'd brought her. Small enough that they might actually fit her. There were other things as well: socks, a little case of toiletries, the tiniest undergarments - or what he thought were undergarments - he had ever seen, a strange elastic and wire device that he had no idea as to its purpose but didn't want to throw away just in case its importance escaped him.

He set the entire bag aside to take back with him, glad of something else he might present as a peacemaking gesture. If she had needed to change once, for whatever reason, she might need to again, and it would be good to have something waiting for her when that time came.

In the end he had six bags to take back, two to keep and four to stow away underground. The rest, the things he could count on to rot and degrade naturally, he scattered - a broken trail of breadcrumbs leading nowhere.

There was no bread this time. But there were muffins, golden and studded with fat violet berries, sitting out on a rack just within reaching distance of the cracked window. He wondered at the ease of it as he snatched up two and deftly eased the window back, at just how convenient it was that the cooling items were set so close to the window that had been left partly open both times he'd happened to come by of late. Perhaps it was better not to examine it too closely.

With a pointed thought of thanks, he circled back around to the campers' bags and headed homeward.

He had taken to keeping a stash of cans up in the kitchen by the hotplate for the sake of convenience, and he took a moment to open one of these and heat it before descending to the tunnel. Most of the bags he left in the cluttered kitchen to deal with later, but the bag with clothes and with potential foodstuffs he took with him, nursing the hope that she might like them

When he entered the tunnel room, it was to find her set upon by tiny furry creatures. The one or two adventurous individuals seemed to have spread the word for the number of rats that now regularly came calling begging for treats and attention had grown. There were currently five little bodies piled on her lap, picking bits of dried banana out of her cupped hand. Another had taken up residence in the other hand, licking at her fingers for salt or lingering traces of sugar, while yet another was nosing about in her hair.

He approached slowly, trying to appear as non-threatening as he knew how. She didn't look up right away, keeping her attention fixed on her rodent companions, but the squeeze of apprehension in his chest lessened when he drew near enough to see her face; for there was a smile there. Faint, perhaps, just a slight upturn at the very corners of her mouth. But it was there, and it was real.

It wasn't until he saw the ghost of it again that it occurred to him just how _much_ affect its absence had made. How much he'd missed it beyond the indication it served of contentment. How much he missed the genial interaction.

He missed the time they had spent reading outside in the afternoons. He had hoped they might start a new book, having finished the last one, but she had been distant even from them. It seemed the rats were the only thing that could penetrate the aura of gloom, and it was quite possible that this was only due to their aggressive persistence. He might have copied them just to see what happened if something in his brain didn't stall at the idea of forcefully imposing on her space by crawling onto her lap and shoving his masked face into her hand. Even if he'd had the courage to do it he couldn't imagine it going over well. Not to mention there was no way he could ever fit on her lap without simply crushing her.

Setting down the bags to one side, he sank into a crouch beside the bedside crate, watching the antics of the rats grabbing and gnawing at their snack with the fervor of starvation. They always ate with such haste, as though every morsel might be their very last. The one at her shoulder had begun chewing experimentally at a piece of her hair and he put down the bowl of soup to reach for it, gently untangling little clawed feet from a reddish curl. He cradled it there in his palm, reaching into the bag of banana for a piece to offer in exchange, stroking down the warm brown fur at its back as it scarfed banana with half-frantic gusto.

"All right, moochers," Whitney murmured, carefully shooing rats off her lap as she did, "no more today."

Following her lead, he lowered his own rat to join the rest. He could feel her eyes on him, a touch of awareness he felt like the brush of something cool, and realized that when he had dislodged the rat in her hair she hadn't flinched away from him. He was right, then - it wasn't that she was afraid of his touch.

He nearly jumped out of his skin when her hand darted out to grip the ragged hem of his sleeve.

"Are you...?"

She was frowning as she peered down at his hand, turning it over in her grasp as though looking for something and not bothering to hide her concern.

Surprised, he blinked down at his own wrist to see the blood there, dried into a flaking crust upon the fabric and smeared across his knuckles. She thought he was hurt - she was looking for an injury. Something in him softened at the thought that she could be miserable and afraid and yet still be distressed at the thought of him injured.

Extending his other hand, he let his fingertips brush the underside of her chin. While he applied no pressure, she startled slightly as she lifted her face to look at him, and he felt the delicate motion of her throat as she swallowed. He waited until she met his eyes before shaking his head in answer. He did so once, slowly, trying to communicate through eyes alone - at once emotive and yet nowhere near expressive enough - that he was not the one to whom that a question as to wellness should be directed.

A tiny furrow appeared between her brows, lips parting as if she were going to speak. Before she could, he released her chin and pointed to her: deliberately holding the indication as solidly as he held her gaze until he watched the bewilderment shift to understanding.

With a flutter of dark lashes, she averted her eyes, drawing them back down to the fabric she still fingered as though it had secrets to divulge. Ever so slightly, her shoulders dropped, and he realized she had just let go of tension she had been holding possibly for days. It had the weight of a sigh, of a long, slow exhale used to steady body and mind.

"I'm..."

A part of him had braced for the inevitable (and meaningless) insistence of _fine_ and was briefly thrown when it didn't come. He had been prepared to insist, to push her as much as he could without a voice, but he hadn't had to.

"I don't really know," she finally finished.

Well...it was definitely more than she'd given him yet. He waited patiently, hoping she might offer more.

"I think I'm just...I don't recognize parts of myself right now and it's freaking me out a little."

Surprisingly, for the vagueness of the statement, Jason found himself empathizing. He might not know to what exactly she was referring, but he understood what it was to be unsettled by change, to be caught unawares and set so off center that it felt like the entire world was thrown off its axis. His own world had been set at an unusual angle ever since having found her; and while he had struggled against it, pulled and yanked like a horse at the bit, but after a point, struggling had become more a waste of energy than anything productive. His life had changed - _he_ had changed. All because of one split-second choice made in a state of shock and confusion. He could choose to rail against it, be angry about it. Or he could accept it. It sounded as though Whitney was in the same place he had been, trying to reconcile what she thought should be and what was.

He nodded, and while she wasn't looking at him she must have caught it out of her periphery. Somehow, she had followed the path of his thoughts, for with a thoughtful lilt she considered: "you know exactly what I'm talking about, don't you? Except for you that's...well, me."

She released his sleeve, dropping her hands to her lap. Once again she was listless and quiet and he frowned behind his mask, once again feeling the unpleasantly sour strain of not-quite remorse nipping at the back of his mind. With a hint of desperation, he produced the muffins. Like an offering before a deity he placed the cheesecloth-wrapped bundle on the crate and waited, tense and holding his breath. She eyed it; a single coppery brow arched in what he hoped was curiosity. When she set down her spoon and reached for it he imagined he could hear the sound of his own heart echoing in his ears it beat so loud.

With a flick of a wrist, she opened it, staring at the contents for a long second that felt like forever. Her face crumpled, and for a fleeting, horrible instant he was sure she was going to cry and his heart plummeted. That was, until she spoke again, a soft, tremulous murmur he wasn't entirely sure he was meant to hear.

"You're trying to cheer me up."

His brow creased with concern. Had she been sad? Because of all the tumult in her head? It had been a statement not a question, yet he nodded anyway, daring to hope.

"Thank you," she said, in a whisper so soft that he only barely heard the words it carried. Yet there was gratitude there. Gratitude and what sounded like relief. Only then did he allow himself to let go of the breath he had been holding.

Sitting back on his heels he watched her slide the bowl of soup along the crate toward herself - watched her cast a longing look of promise at the muffins - and settle in to eat. It was the most enthusiasm she had shown food in some time, which was not exactly a lot, but it was still encouraging to see. She didn't appear bothered by his nearness, and while she did cast the occasional glance his way, the looks were much more along the lines of curious than cautiously wary.

When the soup was gone, she picked up one of the muffins and he noticed how large it was, cradled there between her hands. She had nice hands, he thought, as hands went. Deft and slender with delicate bones. There was a scar just below the prominent knuckle of her left middle finger. A burn, probably, the skin so long healed that what must once have been a red mark had faded to silvery pink. She had broken the muffin into halves, and he just caught the slight tilt of her wrist as if to offer him one before she stilled, uncertain. Her eyes flicked up to his masked face, a quick, brief glance of acknowledgement and…yes, tentative amusement, as she returned it to the cloth wrapper instead. Still, he recognized the thought behind the gesture, if not as much the warm, delicate flutter behind his ribs that followed.

He waited for her to finish eating before gesturing for her to stand, noting her tiny frown of question when she let him take her wrists to unlock the cuffs.

"But I don't need..."

Hushing her with a look, he laid a hand against her back just below the shoulder blades. Then he gently nudged her toward the mouth of the tunnel and outside.

~/~

It was incredible how dark it could get so far from any big cities. The sun hadn't yet fully set, but the shadows fell heavy and deep within the protective enclosure of a wooded space. Spacious paths became close and less familiar and might have seemed oppressive if not for the company.

Her feet made dull, hollow thuds against the wood of the little bridge. The very same bridge upon which she had stood with Mike when he'd told her it had been on her mom's request that he had brought her there. It felt like such a long time ago now. Far longer than a month.

She didn't know why Jason had brought her outside, but she was willing to go with it. The air was so much cooler now than it had been during the day, even underground, and out here she no longer felt like the life was being slowly stifled out of her. She could breathe out here, relish the sensation of the perspiration drying in cold patches at her back and hairline and recover, having just narrowly avoided an emotional breakdown - of which she had already had two in as many days. And over muffins, of all things.

Goddamn _muffins._

Although it wasn't really about the muffins at all. It was...well, everything, really.

Apathy and denial made a good solid shield: had done so since she was little, before doctors starting throwing around terms like _adolescent-onset anxiety, grief-related depression,_ and _coping mechanisms._ Except that she wasn't coping very well this time. It appeared as though the years she had spent leaning on that shield had taken a toll. It had taken quite a beating over the years, she supposed, and with every blow, every additional scrape and dent had weakened it to the point where it could no longer hold. Not that she had realized this until she was throwing up her breakfast into the toilet the morning after the _revelation_ (or whatever the hell it had been).

The protective cocoon of apathy had splintered; every crack a direct path to a nerve now exposed. Her mind - as was made resoundingly clear to her - could no longer block the unpleasantness out and her body had reacted as if it could purge the things she so desperately wanted to reject. She had had the second full-on panic attack of her life there in that tiny summer camp bathroom stall and just like after the first back in her sophomore year of college she was left feeling stripped down to the bone, exhausted and trembling and completely, utterly wrecked.

Jason had noticed immediately that something was wrong. He had before, undoubtedly, but if he hadn't then he would have then when she emerged trembling and sweat-soaked and stinking of the vomit she had no doubt he could smell regardless of her efforts to scour it away with half a tube of toothpaste. She was intimately familiar with how the sour stench permeated a space, emanating just as much from pores as from breath, and she was no exception to that norm. Oh, he had noticed all right, and she had deliberately avoided making eye contact to avoid the questions she knew would be there. Questions that had been there since the moment he had turned around to find her staring at him as though he had just tried to tear out her throat. Questions she couldn't answer.

How could she answer when just to see them - not even hear them, but _see_ them - made the world she understood drop out from under her? How could she answer a question like " _are you ok"_ when she no longer understood what _ok_ was? Yet she had felt it every time he sent her one of those lingering looks cast in concern, somehow louder than any shout could have been and as stinging as a slap - as much accusation as worry or inquiry.

Everything she had done from that point she had done purely out of self-preservation, and it had felt more real, more tenuous and threatening then even the moments spent certain she was looking death in the eye. She had avoided his gaze, disengaged quickly whenever touch was necessary, and acted firmly and decisively as if nothing had changed. She distanced herself, trying her damnedest to exert some manner of control over space, her mind - whatever she had left that was hers - to counteract the feeling of being cut loose and left to tread open water. She wasn't subtle and she was a shit actor, but what else could she do? How was she supposed to cope?

She couldn't get away on her own and he didn't seem inclined to release her, probably because he assumed the second he did was the second she went straight to the police. Not that she suspected they would do anything about it after however many years of missing persons reports and a clear plausible culprit still at large, even with a testimonial from a witness.

So she couldn't run and she couldn't stay, couldn't keep faking her way through the pretense that they both knew was bullshit. She slept fitfully when she slept at all, and when she woke it was with the sensation of blood slick between her fingers and caked in the creases of her palms and she spent uncounted minutes scrubbing her hands with dirt until she could no longer feel it. She knew it was guilt. Guilt tapping into trauma not unlike picking at a scab until it cracked and bled. She knew what it was, but knowing only gave it a name. Knowing didn't block the echoes of old screams from her head.

She felt guilty for surviving, for living when others had not, and guilty for relaxing her grip on the horror of it - for having the audacity to look upon a killer and feel anything beyond all the reasons why she should hate him. She could almost convince herself, too, almost find the will to summon up that terror-founded loathing, even if just a thin, watered-down version of it...then he went and did things like bring her muffins specifically in the effort to make her happy. And so on top of everything else she was left feeling like the biggest wad of human trash that had disciplined a puppy without even explaining what it had done wrong. For all that she knew she shouldn't think of him that way, he kept giving her worried puppy eyes and she knew he wasn't even bothered for his own sake but for _her_ because he _cared_. Damn it all to hell and back.

Dropping the teetering, shattered shield of fakery had been her own fault because ultimately - reason and logic aside - _she_ cared too. Sure, part of it was the nurturer in her, but it wasn't only that.

Her response to seeing blood hadn't been skewed toward the people he had likely slaughtered before coming to bring her baked goods, but rather toward him, out of the worry that he was hurt. And if that wasn't a sign of a paradigm shift she didn't know what was.

And when he had touched her face, fingertips light at her jaw in a way that had been intimate in ways he couldn't possibly realize, her mind had spiraled to places it shouldn't as though she hadn't just spent days agonizing over that very thing. His steely eyes had been soft and earnest and in the moment it had been so easy to forget was he was. At that point she wasn't sure there was any going back.

The things she'd told him back in the tunnel just now had been the culmination of almost three solid days of introspection forged like steel in the fires of stress and disbelief to be finally tempered by a blunt rationality. They had not been easy to come by, nor to speak, but once she'd gotten them out and hung them in the air she had felt their weight lift almost instantly. It did her good to acknowledge them, even if it meant facing up to the fact that no deed of his had been horrible enough to overshadow the horror she'd had for herself. Once again, she had been reminded that she wasn't the only one whose foundation had been shaken to the core. Nor was _he_ the only one that had been dealing with loneliness.

By all rights she shouldn't have been; she'd had plenty of people in her life. But since taking on Ellen's care, she had essentially cut herself off from every other real interpersonal contact. Her relationships had stretched thin and faded until they finally broke, fraying softly and quietly into the past rather than snapping abruptly loose. Only Mike had been persistent enough to stay and half of that was her own need causing her to cling to him like a barnacle to a sturdy surface. But mom had gotten too sick to do much more than trade the occasional sentence or smile between naps, and Mike didn't understand loss of the magnitude she was currently living with even only in theory. She had woken up one morning and there was...no one. She had been wading through her life; through school and work and everything else surrounded by people - and had been more alone than she was out here in the woods.

Odd, how even in the beginning, excluding the times when she was too afraid to feel anything else, she had never felt lonely here. She couldn't puzzle out why that might be since she hadn't talked about anything really profound with Jason, hadn't talked about her mom or the constant, sharp-toothed shadow of oncoming grief that had been lurking at the back of her mind for the better part of a year. Maybe it was because she knew that if she ever did he might actually understand. If anyone could empathize with the loss of a parental anchor, it would be him. But it was more than that.

There was something about his company that was so simple, so effortless. Normally it required effort. Interaction was always a performance and thereby draining, even if the result was pleasant. With Jason she could just...be, and that was enough. She didn't have to speak, didn't have to perform. In fact, he could tell very clearly when she was doing so and he didn't like it. That was why he'd persisted, asking with gestures and pointed looks. It had been for her own comfort that she pretended, not his, because it was bad enough to be physically attracted to him, but it was another thing entirely to find herself connecting to a mass murderer on a level that made her entire two-and-a-half year relationship with Mike feel like a farce. And a pathetic one at that.

Even now in the cool dark, she balked at the thought. She wasn't ready for that truth, truth though it might have been.

Jason's hand skimmed her elbow, drawing her attention in order to indicate that the path they were on was starting to narrow and to lead them up an incline before moving ahead. It had become almost habit again to flinch away, and while she hadn't this time she did find herself rubbing almost self-consciously at her chin where his fingers had grazed skin some time ago, amazed by how he could instill the sentiment of asking permission into touch.

In normal circumstances, she might have snapped at a man that did something similar, irritated by the high-handed effort to make her look at him. But Jason hadn't forced her to do anything. He had only used his hands because he couldn't simply ask her to look at him. The touch itself had been a literal nonverbal _please_. She had known that, even in the moment. Yet everything in her had been shaped to view a touch of that kind as something else, something more, and when combined with that gentle concern turning his irises warm she hadn't been able to interpret it as anything but affection. For a quick, quavering moment she had thought...but no.

For the most part she was confidently self-dependent and self-assured, but sometimes she wanted to be taken care of for a change; to be cradled and looked after and treated like something precious. Deep down she was a colossal sap, and therein lay her biggest problem. Jason naturally seemed to gravitate toward checking all these boxes, just not for the motives she had in mind whenever such fantasies took hold. And while logically she both knew and accepted this, ever since her last attempt to run she kept catching herself leaning into it as though he were just like any other boy she'd developed an interest in.

But if he felt affection for her it was only because she was the closest thing he'd had to a friend since he was a boy. That was all. He didn't see her as a woman. He saw her as female and therefore not exactly like himself, but registered nothing beyond the simplest acknowledgement of physical differences. He wouldn't know what those physical differences meant, though. Would he? She supposed she couldn't know for sure unless she asked - which was something she absolutely _would not_ do.

It didn't matter anyway. Whatever the delicate, traitorous little flutter in her stomach might have told her - the way it ever faithfully did in the wake of a new crush - he was about as likely to see her as something sexual as he was to dance a jig in his underwear. So not at all. In that she was alone, and would remain as such.

She trailed at a distance behind Jason as he scaled the shallow incline, every once in a while catching the ghostly white flash of his mask when he glanced back at her; not, she recognized, for any fear she might vanish, but in case she stumbled or indicated any difficulty. Every time she saw it, something throbbed in her chest like a fresh wound. She had been acting like a fucking crazy person lately - a mess of mixed signals and conflicting messages, one day fine the next near catatonic. But he still kept doing what he could to ensure she was ok.

She wasn't really ok, but that wasn't due to any lack of pains taken on his part.

Almost as soon as her legs started to become less than enthusiastic about the steady incline, the ground evened out beneath her. Jason had come to a stop up ahead and was waiting for her. She quickened her pace, lengthening her stride to catch up, only for her feet to come to a stiff, jerky halt before she closed the final few feet between them.

They had come to the lip of a shallow bluff overlooking the lake. The twilit firs had opened up around them, revealing the scorched summer sun as it began to sink behind the tree-fringed horizon. Swaths of violet and rich indigo spread downward like a swelling bruise as the darker tones gradually bled into fiery pink and orange, the shades blending in the runny, artfully smeared way of watercolor paints.

Whitney felt her breath catch in her throat, a soft squeezing pressure at her diaphragm preceding a sudden rush of emotion it took her a minute to quantify. Jason had turned back to her, and though he was backlit and she couldn't make out even the mask, there was something about his posture that was eagerness and latent energy.

Slowly she walked the rest of the way to him, and the closer she came the harder it seemed to become to breathe. She had to be wrong. It couldn't be that he had...

But he had.

She knew he had. She could feel it in the weight of his gaze upon her face, the sense of stillness he radiated - of anticipation - waiting for her reaction. He had brought her out here to see the sunset.

Her throat locked, a spasm in her lungs dangerously close to becoming a sob, and she forced it down on a hard swallow. She didn't remember the last time someone had done something for her just because, purely for the sake of a smile. There had been plenty of words, plenty of condolences and sympathies, plenty of offered comforts both empty and full - there had been offers of financial support, distractions and tasks and promises. But no one had taken her to go look at something pretty just for a little while because she wasn't feeling like herself. No one had thought to, or known to, and she hadn't felt like herself in years...with the exception of these little moments with him.

Wordless, she looked at him. He still angled his head sometimes specifically to use his left eye, and she couldn't determine whether it was habitual or because the right was truly weaker. He did so then, and she could see the question, the hopeful tenderness.

Did she like it? Was she a little better?

She thought back to what she had told him, that she felt as though looking into herself felt like looking in a mirror and seeing someone else's eyes or nose or cheekbones, and how he had nodded. She had seen the recognition in his eyes, the empathy, and understood that yeah, he _did_ understand it. He understood exactly, because he'd undergone the same uncomfortable reformation of self – not when he'd chosen not to kill her, but afterwards, when the realities of that decision had fully struck him. Eventually he had made his peace with it, and that he would choose to risk the comfortable normalcy he had created for himself for _her_ …it meant a hell of a lot.

Emotion surged. Her chin trembled just as it would have before she subsided into an ugly-sobbing mess of snot and tears. But she had cried so much lately that it seemed her tear ducts had either exhausted themselves of the supplies it took to produce tears or they had simply shut down in protest of the abuse. In the end she was biting down on the inside of her cheek purely out of habit rather than out of the true belief that she was about to start bawling. Even still her face gave her away - the skewed mouth or too-wide eyes, or the expression of raw, dumb stupefaction - because the hopeful levity behind the eye-slots of Jason's mask faltered, which really only made things worse. Her own family hadn't been so attuned to her emotional state, and here someone just a few steps above being a virtual stranger could tell simply by the most minute of alterations in expression.

Fuck it.

So she was a sick, twisted person. So she was morbid and possibly deranged. Who cared what anyone might think of her - who was here to judge? Who _could_ judge, really, except someone else in her precise situation, detail for detail? Nothing would ever come of it, and she couldn't keep punishing him just because she responded to certain things in certain ways, couldn't keep punishing herself for doing so. It wouldn't change anything, and it wouldn't make it any easier to bear. And if that made her some variation of crazy, then fine.

Just... _fuck it._

"It's beautiful," she whispered, and while she made no direct reference to her state of being, she must have given some silent signal.

He nodded once, in agreement and acknowledgement, before turning his face back to the view. After a moment wherein which she took a breath that rattled rather like a sob in her chest, she followed suit.

The tiny black shapes of bats darted about them like spastic nighttime birds just as they had that first night. Amanda had vehemently _not_ been a fan of them she recalled as she tipped her chin to watch the frenetic movements. Just as with rats, people tended not to like them, viewing them as diseased or malicious when they were neither. She supposed she was simply drawn to misunderstood, scary-looking things...and _that_ was a poetically fitting thought. Except Jason wasn't misunderstood at all, really; he was perceived precisely how he wanted to be, exactly how he saw himself in relation to other people. Aside, it seemed, from her.

"Do you ever get lonely out here by yourself?"

She hadn't really intended to ask it: the question seemed to have been pulled from her, as though the solitude around her had reached down her throat to extract it. The world seemed to yawn wider in the night hours as if the darkness erased the separation between earth and sky until they seemed as one, and therefore all the more expansive because of it. With that expansiveness, this little patch of the universe felt that much tinier. As did she.

His shrug was more felt than seen, a rise and fall of one great shoulder that whispered against her arm - sleeve to sleeve. Whitney was abruptly aware of how close they stood and when the thought neglected to bother her, she just as abruptly dismissed it. If it didn't bother him, it didn't bother her.

She interpreted the shrug as a neutral response, a statement of sometimes. He had likely grown up rather accustomed to being alone, likely missing his mother specifically more than the concept of company in general. Still, she couldn't help but imagine that he must have at least wanted a friend once. The inclination he'd shown toward communication, and to humor, were not markers of an individual suited to complete isolation, and the way he had taken to treating her more like a friend than a captive implied the same. Maybe he had stopped recognizing it as loneliness, or maybe after everything had happened the ability to feel such an emotion had just him for a while, burned away by the trauma. Maybe Jason was an introvert too.

"Yeah," she said softly, "I get it. Thank you, by the way, for bringing me out here." And purely because she knew he would have asked if he were capable: "I feel a lot better."

Though she wasn't looking at him to see the reaction to these words, she could almost feel the coil of uncertain tension he had been carrying around all night loosen.

They stayed that way until the horizon of trees swallowed the sun and only the faded remnants of its brilliance remained. Again Whitney was reminded of how much darker it was out in the wilds than it ever got closer to a city, without all the artificial lights to pollute it. Here the sky ceased to be an endless swath of darkness flat as matte paint on a canvas and became instead a glittering, intricately textured space with the depth of a universe.

At some point, when the last lingering warmth started to ebb closer to coolness, they made the silent agreement to head back; and the sky was so bright and thick with stars that it was almost possible to traverse the spaces where the tree cover was sparser with only their brilliance for light. She almost walked into a tree twice before Jason seemed to accept that she wasn't going to stop goggling at the stupid sky, and finally he took hold of her arm to steer her clear of potential concussions.

His hand was sure where it cupped her elbow, the palm textured with callus and scars she couldn't make out in the dark. A killer's hands - no, _working_ hands - careful not to squeeze but only brace and gently guide. It was somewhat distracting to have it there, though mostly because the warmth of him automatically drew her focus to how much chillier it had gotten now that the sun was down.

Her belly was starting to complain, taking on the gnawing sensation with which it responded to emptiness. She hadn't really managed more than a couple swallows of her dinner, and half a muffin. Which, while delicious, hadn't had the capacity to be truly filling, and had been stolen from some poor neighbor likely now scared out of their wits.

Oh well. Better the sacrifice of baked goods than blood or a life.

If it were her, she would have gladly left out bread and wire and whatever else might be in demand just as the superstitious in old Ireland had left out milk for fairies. Maybe if she asked nicely he might consider re-heating her soup.

She pondered that for a moment before deciding to woman up and ask. The question had been a recurrent chirp at the back of her mind almost since the beginning, but was even more relevant now that had more factual reason behind her suspicion that he might not be all human anymore (reason and fact be damned).

"Do you eat?" Jason paused for half a step so she could move up beside him rather than trailing a bit behind. She could just make out his shrug in the dark. "Is that a no, or a sometimes?"

He held up his right hand, showing her two fingers. The second answer, or so she guessed.

"Because you have to or because you want to?"

He hesitated, and then held up one finger, but the delay had been long enough to indicate uncertainty.

"Not really sure?" A nod. "But you can. That answers my question, I think. You should try some muffin when we get back. They're a little cakier than I like my muffins, but no way I'd ever turn down anything with blueberries."

A hand flew to his face, fingers splayed across the mask as though to hold it to his face. He dropped it almost instantly, identifying the movement as involuntary, reflexive in nature. She could no longer see his eyes to tell for sure, but everything about the language of that reflex screamed fear, screamed _shame_.

Immediately she felt like the worst kind of asshole. Eating required freeing the mouth, which would require at least moving, if not completely _re_ moving, the mask. It had become so synonymous with him - so much a part of him to her mind - that she had almost forgotten why he likely wore it in the first place. Whatever - whoever - had caused it, he had come to associate his own face with negative things. By now the mask - as with the sackcloth before it - was likely as much as comfort as it was a shield. It was his version of closing his eyes in a dark place in preference of a self-imposed darkness, a choice to be fearsome in a deliberate way rather than one he could not control.

He didn't want her to see his face because he feared she would run from it. Or, worse, she would ridicule him for it. She had never seen him show anything like fear, but seeing it made him no more or less than he had been. It only made her sad.

In that moment she very much wanted to find whoever had bullied and more than likely tormented him, taking that inherent sweetness and desperate yearning for a friend and warping it this way. Wanted to find them and slam their heads into a wall until they saw God. Proving the fact that just because she didn't administer harm didn't mean she was above wishing it on others anyway. Her sense of justice was strong and sharp enough to lean more into the realm of vengeance. Apparently, they had that in common. He just _acted_ on his.

"I didn't mean-not eat in front of me, just...take it for later, maybe. If you wanted."

He nodded, perhaps a little too quickly, and she thought he had probably understood that to begin with. Still, reflex was reflex: she understood that well enough.

Deliberately she changed the subject.

"You know what," she said, smoothing over the rough patch with a dose of levity and plain fact. "I _do_ have to pee."

After a long moment of quiet, she heard the rough, husky exhalation she knew was a laugh.

* * *

 **NOTES:  
** **  
**Sorry for the delay! Jason was being a bit of a problem child.

This chapter is me at my best: Queen of Angst. It isn't quite as long as I wanted it to be...but I think it'll work out for the best in the end for a number of reasons. I'm going to stop typing now for fear I second-guess myself and decide not to post it. So until next time!

One last thing, though: thank you so, so much to everyone for the comments and the follows/favorites and for being so goddamn lovely. Bless you.


	11. Follow Me Down

**Chapter 11  
** Follow Me Down

~/13/~

 **Day 27**

"And then they use maggots to eat away the dead flesh so the surrounding tissue doesn't become necrotic too, because maggots only eat the dead stuff. Gross, right?"

They were sitting in the grass, shaded by the thick branches of a great fir. Half an hour ago Jason had been listening to her read while he mass constructed new snare loops to have ready for later use. Normally when her voice got tired, she took a nap, especially mid-afternoon when the day was at its hottest, often requesting to go back to the relatively cooler shelter of the tunnels. But today had been different. She had set the book down, stretched, watched him for a moment or two, then took up wire and cutters and proceeded to help.

At some point – via some progression he couldn't fully recall – they'd gone from making snares to him teaching her how to tie increasingly more complicated knots. The legitimacy of said knots was somewhat questionable, as he had learned most of them via a combination of spending hours experimenting with rope and sheer necessity. She had the benefit of small hands, which made the complex weaving and looping patterns easier to manage, but lacked the experience that made it genuinely easy. Still, she managed well enough to fill the time she wasn't concentrating too hard with idle talk about what she termed _nasty medical stuff._

She didn't appear very put off by the one-sided nature of the conversation, for which he was grateful. He liked hearing her talk, and it was a relief that his lack of reciprocation didn't make her think he wanted silence. Far from it. While the nuances of what she described sometimes escaped him, he could follow about as well as she could follow his wordless knot-tying demonstration: with some skips and stalls along the way.

He smiled, heartily amused. Gross or no, Whitney's tone was all delighted fascination. There was no disgust to be heard, and for all that her nose had wrinkled as if she smelled something as rotten as the subject matter, her eyes glittered with more of the same. The subjects of her stories didn't bother _him_ at all – even the ones which featured large needles being stuck in distinctly unpleasant places. He was familiar enough with death to be more than a little desensitized even to the idea of quite a lot of things. Death itself was dirty and foul, and smelled of far worse than just blood or bile.

In spite of her somewhat deliciously horrified tones, she didn't seem overly disturbed either, with the singular exception of something called a _sucking chest wound_ , at the mention of which she actually dry-heaved before choking on her own snort of laughter – evidently amused by her own visceral revulsion. Clearly there was a part of her that enjoyed being a little bit disgusted. It was not something he would have imagined of her in the beginning. Now, though, it seemed right.

"So...wait."

Whitney undid the loop she had just made, staring down at the length of twine held between her hands as though willing it to submit. There was a deep furrow between her dark brows – a crease which Jason felt the unusual urge to smooth out with the pad of a finger.

"Around and under," she muttered under her breath, glancing between the half-tied knot Jason held cupped in an open palm as he waited for her to catch up.

After a moment he took pity on her and undid the last tuck he'd done to show her a second time, slowly, and a screechy " _aha!"_ burst from her mouth. She copied the tuck and pulled the loose end, cinching the knot tight. It was, perhaps, a little _too_ tight, but for this particular knot too tight was better than too loose, and she was beaming as though she'd just accomplished a borderline herculean task.

She had been in an extraordinarily good mood all day; something which he relegated to the new, and likely far cooler, clothes she had changed into that morning.

As he'd suspected, most of the food liberated from the would-be campers had been, while edible, not entirely _food_ , per-say, and while she had kept a few things most had been rejected. The clothes, however, had been a definite win. She had been incredibly pleased by the odd wire-and-elastic contraption, her half-relieved glee instilling the reflective happiness in himself that he had decided to cease questioning, and she had become increasingly more enthusiastic as she'd rifled through the duffle's contents to choose a replacement for the long-sleeved flannel.

The new shirt – if that was still the right name – had no sleeves beyond the straps that cut white lines across her bare shoulders. It had been oddly distracting at first to see so much skin. Odd since there was nothing inherently interesting about skin specifically; he'd seen plenty of it, and had plenty of his own. He had seen far more than a few female bodies far less covered in the past and hadn't so much as blinked. Yet he had repeatedly found his attention wandering to these newly visible places, studying the graceful transition from neck to shoulder where her hair fell, the collarbones arching below the hollow of her throat, the expanse of upper back, the soft shadow which halved her chest.

And it wasn't only the skin. The denim pants she'd donned were not unlike the ones she had worn in the beginning, but they were tighter, thinner, and clung. The curving slopes and contours of the shape previously hidden away by the folds of baggy clothes were no longer so, and while before he hadn't taken much notice beyond her tangible existence he was infinitely more aware now of the way the liberated clothes fit her.

Not for anything could he put together why, only that he felt like the refrigerator magnets he'd once played with – drawn by some unavoidable cosmic force that yanked his eyes to her. And every time he caught himself doing so he would feel a strange sense of unease prickling at the back of his consciousness that didn't match the compulsion he had to look again. If he were honest with himself, it was more than a little disturbing.

Not that he _was_ , in fact, honest with himself.

Shifting the knotted twine to one hand, she held up the other, arm bent at the elbow in a ninety-degree angle with her palm flat and facing him. Her eyes were bright with the little victory, shining green-gold in the flecks of afternoon light that filtered through the shade.

She was looking at him expectantly. Suddenly he understood there was a significance to the raised hand that he was intended to understand and respond to. There was a small spark of recognition: a memory buried deep in his brain that he couldn't quite access. Tentatively he raised his hand to mimic hers and paused, not fully remembering what to do with it.

Whitney nodded encouragement. "Yup, and now we slap one another's palms—like this."

She lightly tapped the flat of her hand against his and the memory unearthed itself in entirety. Yes, he remembered the gesture, remembered seeing it done, but never having done it himself, and there was a small, childish part of him that felt as though he were finally completing a rite of passage of sorts.

He felt the smile pull at his skewed mouth as she retracted her hand and said, "Now again, together this time," and he mimicked her movement, gently touching palms with her. It wasn't quite a _slap_ , as she'd deemed it, but it seemed to suit her need to celebrate her victory over the knot, for she shot him a grin that seared like pure sunlight before dropping her hand to her lap.

Unbidden his thoughts spiraled back to that morning during her exploration of the clothes and the rat that had been settled there at her lap, curled up in a be-tailed ball. It had frequently interrupted her breakfast with insistent begging for snacks. Begging Whitney had staved off with bits of the oat cereal discovered amid the bag of food. She'd snapped good-naturedly at it every time, dubbing it a pest and herself a "crazy cat lady," although he had no idea what that meant. He only really maintained the rough idea of what a cat looked like, recollected from an old picture book when he'd been learning – or failing to learn – how to read. He remembered they said _meow_ and not much else. A rat was definitely not the same thing, of that he was certain.

Still, in spite of her grousing she had fed it more than she needed to and didn't so much as bat an eye when it curled up there for a nap. Seeing her interact thusly with the little creatures did something unusual to his insides: they seemed to soften within the confines of flesh and bone like butter left out on a summer day, warm and malleable in ways no longer entirely alien, but still bizarre.

He had thought often about her question of loneliness over the past few days, turning it over in his mind like a stone, testing the edges, the smooth surfaces, the nicks and divots. He could recall having been lonely before, the yawning hollowness that he'd thought might swallow him from the inside out, but after...after there had been only pain. Only anger. Only an unending cycle of exhaustion.

He had thought about it so much that he had dreamed last night. Of his first kill: the girl from the lakeside. The survivor.

It had been the first and only time he'd left the grounds and the area immediately surrounding them, and then only to silence the compulsive need to see the thing finished. The pull had been too strong to fight; the demand for justice – for balance – clamoring so raucously inside his head that eventually he could no longer think for the noise in his ears.

He didn't know how he'd managed to find her. He shouldn't have been able to, he had no knowledge how tracking was done without physical tracks to follow – of which there had been none. It had been over a year, she had left by car, lived more than several cities away. It had been a force beyond his own making. His feet had simply carried him to where she was, guiding him like the weight of his mother's hand on his shoulder pressing him on. The pitch of his rage spiraling higher and louder until the very second he had taken hold of the girl's skull and shoved the ice pick through the thin layer of bone at the temple to bury it deep within her brain. Only then had the constant wailing in his head gone quiet.

It had occurred to him when leaving that he might have been seen, that something bad might have come from the perhaps ill-advised quest for vengeance. But some things were worth the price of the consequences.

After that point, he didn't remember feeling anything quite like the gnawing, hungry solitude of his childhood. Oh, he missed his mother, but he was no longer sure what he missed wasn't simply the presence of someone who knew what to do, someone to give him direction, a purpose beside the one of killing.

Sometimes it was when he missed her the most that he was also at his weariest. Sometimes to the point that he felt scraped empty and hollow, clinging to the last shreds of her he could find amid the cycle of violence and simultaneously wishing that he could just...stop. Normally he refused to tolerate these moments for long. Such a wish felt like disloyalty of a kind that discomforted him, because without the killing it would mean she was truly gone, and without even that poor, pitiful link to her, what point was there in existing?

Jason didn't have the schooling to understand the premise of existentialist thought, but he steered away from it instinctively nonetheless; knowing that the road of those particular thoughts led to places he couldn't go, if not the specific reasons why. For one, he had no way to know if he could die anymore, that if he were to stab or slice or cleave himself apart if he wouldn't simply mend as he always seemed to. He had no way to know if were to hurl himself back into the lake from which he'd been reborn if he could still drown, and that, of all possibilities, he flatly would not try. And if he could not _end_ , then...he supposed he must go on doing as he always had, carrying on the cycle of vengeance for the rest of eternity.

Yet just now, sitting in the grass at the base of the tree with the remembered imprint of her hand small and slender against his as vivid as though it rested there still, he had the sense of some old, scabbed-over wrong made inexplicably right.

He had never had a pet growing up, nor siblings, or anything else that required caretaking. Whitney was neither, of course, but with her had come the purpose of keeping something alive and well, and if he were honest with himself – which in this case he was – the purpose in maintaining life and fostering contentment was a far more engaging one than the opposite. Not to mention pleasant. He hadn't really considered before, but maybe a part of him hadn't thought he deserved to find pleasant things within existence any more, or at least that pleasant things no longer had a place within said existence – as though, since he was no longer truly _alive_ , his state of being no longer revolved around joy or peace. Whether or not that had been true or just belated analysis, it no longer _felt_ true.

Whitney bent slightly at the hips, undoing the knots in the piece of twine before she returned it to the pile of supplies. It brought her ever slightly closer to him and he caught the scent of her: citrus and soap, the salt of sweat, and beneath that something like the earth after it rained. Indescribable, but soft and singularly nice.

"I wish you could tell me about your life," she lamented as she straightened, shoving loose waves of hair back from her face. "I have so many questions. Maybe not about the murder, though."

Her lips curved faintly, a tiny, almost-smile, and warmth curled beneath his skin. He didn't know what it was, but when she did that it made something swoop in his chest like a diving bird, deep down beneath the ribs. He might have thought he was ill, though it would have been the first time since his waking on the shore of the lake, evidently not drowned.

He had never seen anything quite the same shade of pink as Whitney's mouth, no flower or fruit or anything in nature. He liked that the color was a thing uniquely hers. He rather liked her mouth, come to think of it. It seemed a strange thing to like, after all a mouth was a mouth, wasn't it? It had a function – several functions for those with voice – and that was all. But perhaps that was an over-simplification, after all he could tell by the set of a trespasser's mouth whether they had fully realized their circumstances or if they still thought they were the subject of a prank. Whitney's mouth was no less a tool with which to gauge expression and he utilized it as such: studying the set of it, the soft lines which bracketed it which she smiled, the precise curve of her lower lip and the subtle indentation at its center.

It took him a full second to realize there had been no censure in her voice, but rather humor. Dry, yes, but humor all the same. He blinked, wondering at what point the subject of murder had ceased to be one to avoid at all cost.

At some point she had picked up the jar of water she had taken to toting around whenever they went on outdoor excursions, unscrewing the metal lid and cradling it between her hands while she studied him.

She looked at him that way now sometimes, with a peculiar sense of anticipation, as though she expected him, or wanted him, to do something. He didn't know what it was, and she was never forthcoming about explaining, both of which made his stomach pitch with equal parts agitation and unease – fretting, perhaps unnecessarily, that he was doing something wrong. He was starting to wonder whether it wasn't his own ignorance that upset him more than what might or might not be wrong. Whatever it was, he had the sneaking suspicion that it was so completely outside his realm of comprehension that he didn't know if he would have asked even if he could. Though he did rather desperately want to know.

Lifting the jar to her lips, Whitney averted her gaze and the odd expression smoothed away just as it always did, though his anxiousness lingered.

"Mm—" She made a noise around her mouthful of water, her throat bobbing rapidly with her swallow. "You know, you might not be able to answer complicated questions, but I could ask closed ones. Yes or no questions. Right?"

Jason blinked, completely sidelined. What had she been talking about? His life. She wanted to ask him about his...life? What on earth for? He nodded somewhat automatically, still feeling a little slow to comprehend as though the space between his brain and skull had become stuffed full of cotton fluff.

"You don't have to answer anything you don't want you. Or you can completely ignore me, that's fine too."

He exhaled sharply through his nose, mocking offense at her suggestion that he ignore her, and caught the flash of her smile as she returned the lid to her water jar.

"Ok, then."

Leaning back on her elbows, Whitney stretched her legs out in front of her so that her toes just breached the line of shade.

Almost the instant they had settled there she had removed her shoes and socks. The temperature just seemed to keep climbing with each passing day, and this was by far the hottest yet. Perspiration had added a soft, allover gleam to her skin and darkened the fabric at the small of her back, gathered at her hairline. He was feeling rather warm again too, now that he considered it – not quite stifling, and not sweating, but mildly uncomfortable. Though not enough to act on.

"Did you always live here?"

He blinked again, feeling his brow lift with his surprise. Of all the things he'd expected her to ask, that hadn't been one of them...not that he really knew what he should have expected. He had no what to know what things might or might not peak her interest.

"The house was yours, right?" she added when he didn't answer right away, "you lived there with your mom?"

He was halfway through a nod when he lifted a hand to belay it. Holding up a finger, he indicated: _first question_. Then he shook his head.

"No, you didn't always live here," she guessed, and he nodded, holding up two fingers.

 _Second question._ Another nod, this time with conviction behind it.

"Got it. Were you little when you moved? Do you remember it?"

For a moment, he considered, casting his thoughts back in time to when they had come to the camp. He hadn't been little, not the way she meant. Calculating, he held up his hand again, showing her four fingers.

"You were four years old? Or, you were here for four years before...before."

She let the question drift, sensitive to the subject of the deaths that had turned the once active camp into a ghost town. Which he appreciated. Neither of them needed it any more defined than that.

He indicated the second answer: four years. Four summers spent in the little corner of hell while the counselors and other children alike made it brutally clear that he was not like them and _not_ welcome. Not that that had stopped him from trying anyway. He had always been persistent that way, or maybe overly optimistic was the better description – for he had maintained a chokehold on the hope that maybe tomorrow he might convince someone that he would make a good friend. Just _one_ someone. It would have been more than enough. The optimism had not managed to overcome what had happened, though. Even the hardiest of plants could only take so much abuse before they simply withered.

Whitney's chin dipped slightly with her nod, seeming to read the negative slant to the answer. He realized the muscles in his shoulders had coiled reflexively and he rolled them back, coaxing them to relax.

"Was it weird living at a summer camp?" she asked then, only to amend, "I guess it's hard to know if something's weird when it's your normal. Let's change that question to: did you like living at a summer camp?"

His immediate response came almost without his will to drive it, his head jerking sharply from side to side. Then he stilled. It hadn't been all bad. Certainly the summers had been exercises in emotional endurance, but there had been good things too. He could just recall what it had been like to live in a neighborhood: all the cement and chain link fencing, the tiny cramped yard with grass that never seemed to be any less than seventy percent brown at any given time. After the move he'd had the run of the woods with all the trees he could possibly climb and not a square foot of cement in sight aside from the camp structures.

He amended the vehement negative answer by creating a so-so motion with his hand, and Whitney gave a small smile. "I think all kids feel that way about where they live. The grass is always greener, and all that."

Puzzled, he felt his head tilt slightly to one side, which Whitney mirrored a split second later, tilting her own head the same way. Another little crease formed between her brows. Once again he felt the compulsion to smooth it away.

"You don't know that phrase? The grass is always greener on the other side? It means we always tend to want what we don't have."

Well that, as he could attest, was absolutely true.

Whitney stifled a yawn behind a hand and shook her head rapidly as if to clear it. "Sorry. I'm not bored," she quickly explained, "The heat makes me sleepy."

He blinked, somewhat bewildered. Did yawning happen with boredom as well as being tired? Fascinating.

"What did you...no, sorry. Did you go to school?"

He answered with a shrug, only somewhat paying attention. Her feet were moving, toes flexing and curling gently as if on absentminded habit as if she didn't even realize she was doing it. Such _tiny_ toes. Again, he had seen plenty of feet before – people seemed almost instinctively inclined to shuck their shoes like a snake its skin upon arriving to the lake grounds in the summer.

His eyes followed the fine bones along the arch of her ankles to where muscle curved at the back of each calf. She had very long legs, he noticed. Long and sleek. He'd seen her run, and even when hindered by bound hands and heavy chain she had been a strong runner. He kept likening her to a deer in his mind, or a bird, all russet and white, swift and light and graceful.

The feeling of being smothered in his coat increased, and he had the creeping feeling that he was doing something he should not. He averted his gaze to the grass in front of him, the knotted mess of twine that lay there, brow creasing with his frown.

He didn't like this feeling, this tangle of confusion and heat that made his chest feel tight and foreign. It felt like...like he was changing.

Well, of course he was changing, that had been unavoidable from the start. The problem wasn't that there was change, but that the change didn't _stop_ – it just kept building on itself, reminding him of what Whitney had said before.

 _"I don't recognize parts of myself right now."_

He felt her eyes on him, and knew without seeing it that she was looking it him in that wistful, almost-sad way that made his stomach turn over like a car engine in a spluttering attempt to start. It was as if she was staring right through his clothing, through skin and flesh and bones into the places that were no longer hollow as he had come to believe they were. His fingers curled into the grass, combating the sudden clawing, urgent need to get away from her – away from her pale, pretty face and green-flecked eyes that saw far too much. The urge to run, to flee from something dangerous.

There was something very wrong with him. He was _not_ prey, and _she_ was not a threat. But he didn't fully believe it, because there was a part of him - a small, whisper-thin part way, deep down – that was very much afraid of this small slip of a girl. It was as if she was a force that was pulling him in...although in to what, exactly?

"How about...did you do things for fun?" Whitney's voice broke through the cloud of confusion in his head. "Like sports? For instance, I was on my high school's track team."

His eyes flicked to her face, the frown in them redirecting. It was better, easier, to direct the confusion into her statement than whatever was going on in his head.

"Competitive running," she explained, which really did explain some things. "Well, sort of, but not really—I wasn't that good." She propped her chin on her shoulder as she clarified, "did you do anything like that?"

It took Jason about ten seconds to decide how to answer, more than half of which had been devoted purely to awe over the unexpected similarity they now shared.

Gathering up the twine and other materials, he shoved them back into his pockets, gesturing as he did for her to get up. Her expression turned to one of mild puzzlement, but she shoved her feet back into her shoes and followed anyway.

He couldn't tell her, but he could _show_ her.

~/~

The interior of the house was even shoddier than she remembered.

The door they used opened into the kitchen, where the paint upon the walls peeled up in strips like bark from a birch tree and the cheap linoleum bubbled and curled at the corners where moisture had seeped underneath. Water stains created patterns on the ceiling. Tree limbs had burst right through one wall, the foundation underneath likely suffering damage from roots. Every flat surface was covered in clutter. Dishes and opened, empty cans, spilled food too old now to even have any smell beyond the general odor of uncleanliness, unopened mail, bits of foliage dry and one poke away from becoming dust.

It was old mess, untouched, no doubt since it had been left by the previous owner's descent into grief-fueled madness.

 _"What if some homeless person lives here?"_

They had been the first words out of her mouth upon setting foot through the bent screen and finding herself inside the room that had looked like the ghost-story copy of a cute 1960s kitchen. She had said it mainly as an attempt to convince Mike to leave well enough alone, not because she legitimately thought it might be true. Or, so she'd thought at the time. Maybe a part of her had known someone was there with them – some deep-buried instinct that people no longer tended to pay attention to now that they had molded themselves around the arrogant assumption that they were the top of the food chain. Though that possibility was a little pointless now. The fact that she'd said it at all, regardless of reason, sat like bad food in her stomach sometimes, now that she knew more of what had happened between the rotting walls.

She hadn't paid much attention to the house itself after that first night, when she'd been an unwelcome – and unknowingly rude – intruder. At first the reason had been terror, and when the terror had passed through resignation and acceptance she simply hadn't had much reason to look when it served only as the means of passage from outside to the tunnels. Except for the bathroom. The trapdoor was located directly outside the bathroom door, and she hadn't been able to look too closely inside for fear of seeing the hole in the floor and remembering what had caused it.

The difference between then and now was almost profound.

As she followed Jason through the kitchen and into the dark hall, she realized the creepy abandoned house out in the dark woods had stopped feeling like a monster. It was run down and falling apart, tracked with dirt and spots of mildew, being slowly, steadfastly reclaimed by nature; but it was no longer the scary place spawned from her horror movie nightmares. It was just a neglected house. No more, no less.

The carpet under her feet was threadbare almost the point of nonexistence, and every so often she thought she caught the smell of something burnt when she walked on it as though it had been scorched. They passed the living room to the left, and she remembered the little upright piano inside it, leaning to one side and half its keys broken. She had found the whistles in there – a group of them so out of place that their presence alone had felt freaky and wrong. She wondered now if they hadn't belonged to that first group of counselors, if Mrs. Voorhees hadn't returned to the house with each kill to hang up her trophies. Or if Jason had found them on her body and done it for her.

It was also the room where they had found the jewelry box.

Her hand rose at the memory of the faded pink satin, fingers curling beneath the locket suddenly heavy at her throat.

"Jason-"

He stopped, turning to her with that subtle air of question he had a knack for producing, and she felt her conviction momentarily fail her.

"Do you…do you want this back?"

She indicated the jewelry cupped in her palm. It had begun to feel at home there around her neck, but she could never really forget why it was there, or where it had come from.

She knew she had already apologized for taking it, and for the part she had played in desecrating the mausoleum his childhood home had become, but an apology didn't feel like enough. Even if to his eyes she had paid her debt, or even if she never could, surely he would want the necklace returned to its rightful place.

Yet as she watched, frown lines formed around his eyes. Even in the dark it was evident. He looked...puzzled, as though he couldn't understand why she would ask him such a thing. When he shook his head he did so slowly, as though he wasn't sure he was answering the question he thought he was.

"Are you sure? It was your mother's, wasn't it?"

He nodded, the gesture surer than its predecessor.

"But-"

Before she could fully form her rebuttal, he had cut her off, laying the tips of his fingers across her mouth in a very clear request for her to shush. She could feel the callus lining them, rough, but not unpleasant, and the heat of her own breath reflected back at her, and promptly shut up.

His hand dropped to the locket, fingers brushing hers as he pressed them closed around the oval pendant, and while she could understand the command of _keep it_ , especially where the repentant nature of the locket's being there in the first place was concerned, the neutral softness in what she could make out of his expression didn't seem to match. It was like he was refusing her attempts to give back a gift, not insisting she keep the symbol of her wrongs in place.

Before she could attempt pressing again he'd turned back, ducking his head to pass through the open doorway of one of the rooms. Forced to follow or be left in the hall, Whitney stepped across the threshold, her eyes lifting to peer inside.

Her entire body rattled with the force of the hitch in her pulse.

It was the bedroom; the one that had so obviously belonged to a child. The one, she understood now, had once been his.

The windows were still open, gauzy white curtains wafting gently with each faint whisper of air, yet this was the only thing that felt unchanged. One of the dresser drawers had been left askew, offering a peek at the clothes folded in neat layers within, and a pair of sneakers had been left at the end of the twin bed, the white toes scuffed and dirt-smeared, the fire-engine red canvas dulled by dust. Toys, old long before they had come to live there, chipped and well-loved and a little bedraggled. Her eyes traveled over the room, over little details that had seemed so sinister before, and she felt none of the menace, none of the thick, oppressive anger. She just felt overwhelmingly sad.

Jason had taken an immediate left, crossing to the corner where a squat little bookshelf stood. Picture books and light chapter books littered the shelves, interspersed by tiny toy cars and animal figurines, as though the scene of some epic saga of play had been interrupted before its finale. But this wasn't what she was meant see.

At the forefront of the topmost shelf stood the trophies; a neat little row of them, dust-choked and festooned with cobwebs, and all – every single one of them – for archery.

"Oh, how cool," she murmured, bending down to get a closer look and blowing gently to dislodge some of the grime coating the name plates. They were just cheap summer camp awards, listing the date and not much else, but there were at least ten of them, indicating he must have won at least two competitions every year.

She had formulated the question based on what she knew of him, assuming he had been more outdoorsy as a kid than others might have been. Learning difficulties aside, he simply didn't strike her as having been the kind to while away inside if he had another option. Archery actually made a lot of sense. It was a solitary sport, something he could practice and excel at alone, and would explain at least some of how he had come to be such an efficient killer. He would have perfected his sense of aim long before he would have had to rely on it.

She straightened, remarking: "These are all for first place." He shrugged, as if to say it was no big deal, which she refused to let stand. "You must be really good."

Another shrug, but she thought there might be something bashful in the way his eyes dropped to the floor, and she felt a warm rush of fondness.

Something at the corner of her periphery caught her attention; a dark spot perched atop the bed's lumpy old pillow. Inexplicably she felt her feet begin to move, carrying her toward it. As soon as she drew near enough to distinguish the shape of the teddy bear she experienced a sudden jolt of deja vu.

She remembered the bear, ragged from love, remembered that when she had last looked in this room it had been sitting on the bed itself, propped against the headboard, not on the pillow. Did Jason still sleep here? The bed itself was in a state of wrinkled order, as though someone had tried to make it up without quite knowing how, yet it alone was absent the healthy layer of dust which coated the rest of the room, which suggested that he might.

The seam along one side of the bear's body had pulled loose, bleeding stuffing gone yellow with age, and one button eye was missing. It had the look of something handled often, and she was left wondering whether he still held it throughout the night, whether for comfort or out of habit. The thought made her heart squeeze.

Whitney reached almost without thinking before snatching back her hand as if in reaction to being bitten by a rattlesnake. She had touched enough of his things without asking already and did not need to do so again. When she looked up it was to find Jason observing her from where he stood at the end of the little bed. For a moment she worried she had crossed a line of some kind, but he appeared more curious than bothered, his posture was loose and relaxed.

"May I?" she asked, pointing to the bear.

He made an odd motion, half nodding while hunching his shoulders as if an accompanying shrug had stalled halfway through, and she took careful note of it. He didn't feel protective enough to tell her no, but she should tread gently.

Gingerly she scooped up the plush animal, cupping a hand over the gash in its side to keep the stuffing from spilling out. Overall, it was in remarkably good shape. The fabric was a bit matted and a bit dirty, but it was neither patchy nor worn thin, and the rest of the seams were holding strong. The tear appeared to have been the result of snagging on something rather than the stitches themselves giving way.

Cradling the bear in her hands, she moved around the bed to where he waited, watching closely as she fingered the edges of the torn seam.

"I could probably fix this," she said, before hesitating.

Maybe he wouldn't want her to. Maybe it was enough just having her touch it, let alone mauling it with a needle. Yet while she had almost expected refusal, he seemed to straighten as if perking up at the sight or smell of something good.

"If you want?"

His eyes lit up like stars. He had to be beaming behind his mask, for he was radiating hope and elation brilliant enough to be near blinding. The heart that had squeezed moments ago now ached, so full of emotion that it felt as though her rib cage might be too narrow to contain it.

It took a little while to find the right tools with which to perform said mending job, but in the end Whitney sat under the light in her corner with what had to be the world's smallest and most practical sewing kit housed in an old cookie tin.

The thread was the heavy-duty kind made for serious business patch-jobs, which made sense considering the original owner had been the mother of a young boy who had likely been quite active and quite prone to torn clothing, and was more than adequate for fixing up a wounded teddy bear. She used a neat, tidy overhand stitch to pinch and hold the two raw edges together, routinely poking stuffing back inside. Jason hovered the entire time, crouched closer than usual and following every pass of the needle as though it were piercing through actual flesh in a show of concern that was utterly involuntary, and absolutely one of the most adorable things she'd ever seen. It seemed a shame that no one else ever would. No one else would ever know that the big bad wolf of Crystal Lake was such a puppy at heart.

"There we go," she proclaimed once finished, and snipped off the leftover thread with the tiny pair of scissors from the tin. It no longer looked quite so sad now that its insides weren't in constant peril of leaving its body, but there was still something missing.

Reaching into the duffle of clothes, she rifled about for a moment before extracting the oversized men's plaid shirt that she'd managed to wash (sort of) in the bathroom sink. With a deft flash of scissors, she freed one of the buttons and affixed it to the empty space left by the bear's missing eye. The buttons didn't match, but not matching was a far cry from being completely lopsided, wasn't it?

She offered the bear with a quiet "here," and there was a weight to Jason's silence as he reached to take it, an almost tentative care. Then he was cradling the toy in his great hands, a little less ragged than it had been, staring down at it with something that was disbelief and wonder and yet neither and both all at once, as if she had just returned a piece of his childhood to him – one that had been stolen away far before its time.

His eyes rose to hers, liquid and a bit over bright, and he didn't need words. She read the gratitude there as clear as if written ink to paper or carved in stone. It had been such a small thing, a small act, but she had been alive long enough – had spent enough time looking through the lens of adulthood – to know that more often than not it was the smallest of things that tended to hold the most weight. Little kindnesses were indicators of thoughtfulness far greater than the actions themselves. While it was nowhere near exact, she knew what it was to feel like one's childhood had gone too soon, and she knew what it was to feel the simple joy of it again just for a moment.

Smiling, Whitney put the sewing things back in the tin, her eyes lingering on the scissors. They were tiny but they were sharp as only the very best sewing scissors were, and it did not escape her in that moment that at one point she would have tried to keep them, to slip them away out of sight somewhere to use later – whether to pick a lock or gouge a hand or an eye. Nor did it escape her that that point had not been all that long ago. Her eyes lingered, but her fingers did not.

After a moment, she popped the lid firmly into place and added the kit to the steadily growing piles on and around her crate.

Funny how quickly things could change.

Her eyes flicked to the wall where her tallies stood in crooked rows. She was still dutifully adding one with every sunrise, but the act had become more routine than a method of maintaining sanity. There were so many of them now. But when one remembered that each mark counted for a single day, there weren't that many at all. Not quite a month. Not that much time, in the grand scheme of things, yet it felt as though she had been here for far longer. Maybe that was how time had felt in less advanced times, when the hours and what they ruled were less important than the seasons, when time wasn't spent and used like so much cold currency. Or maybe not.

There was something grounding about time lived this way. For maybe the first time since she had been little she no longer felt as though she was constantly chasing after the time she was losing as quickly as she caught it. How much of that, she wondered, was because – just like when she'd been little – she had been removed from responsibilities?

It was weird...she knew what she _should_ want: to be back home with Mom, with Mike (ignoring the fact that Mike no longer existed to be with). With her textbooks and her looming exams and all the terrifying possibilities of a future that looked more like a shapeless void of uncertainty and fear than anything else when she tried looking into it. Still, it was her life, whatever its troubles. Yet sometimes the thought of returning to it brought her within a hair's breadth of breaking out in a cold sweat.

She didn't know what she wanted anymore. Because if she could just stay in this slice of reality where time slowed down she could pretend that in some other part of the state the woman that had raised her and loved her wasn't slowly withering away.

She knew that wasn't how time, or life, worked, just as she knew that pretending was a way of exerting control over something she had never had control over. Regardless of what the outcome might be, she could still ask to go. She could explain to Jason that she wanted to go home to her dying mother – not counting how icky and even manipulative that piece of truth might have felt coming out of her mouth. She could promise to come back, and even mean it. But it was easier to remain in a state of perceived powerlessness than it was to make another choice when all roads at the end of that choice led to watching her mom die.

Jason was still staring down at the stuffed bear in his hands, running a fingertip over the rounded crest of an ear that looked as though it had been chewed on the regular. Which was weirdly and completely endearing.

Whitney knew that the idea of repentance wasn't something that should be weighing on her. For all the missteps she may have made, at the time she hadn't known she had been trespassing, hadn't known that she was doing any more than treading ground that had seen more than its share of suffering. Whatever wrong she had done, it hadn't been done with intent or with malice. And whatever wrong she had done, he had paid her back in punishment far beyond what had been earned. Still, she was pleased that she had been able to do something – even just this small something – for a person that had seen so much of the darker parts of life.

Where once she had merely wondered, now she knew. Kindness was the way to fixing whatever was broken in this little sliver of the world, not violence, not a show of power.

Just simple kindness, and maybe a light dash of hope.

~/~

 **Day 31**

He hadn't been doing anything out of the ordinary; just sitting at the workbench cleaning the blade of the machete with mineral oil. Yet for some reason, everything about it was just…

She'd had to stop reading. They were currently about a third of the way into a murder mystery set on a train in the 1920s, very a 'la Murder on the Orient Express although with vastly different characters and – or so she suspected – a vastly different ending. It was an engaging book, and they were at a good part, but her eyes had kept straying from the page, lingering on the way his hands moved as he polished the metal using long, smooth strokes with the cloth. After several minutes spent tripping over her tongue she just gave up, because there was just no point. She had had to cover up the signs of her idiocy by downing half a jug of water when he'd looked up from his work, evidently wondering what was wrong.

She'd blamed a scratchy throat. Or allergies. She didn't actually remember now. Just like she didn't remember what had happened in the last couple pages she had been attempting to get through.

 _Ugh._

Jason had gone back to his task, holding the blade close to his face and looking down the length of it, turning it this way and that as if looking for nicks or scratches that needed tending.

It was his hands, she thought. She'd always had a bit of a thing for nice hands, and Jason's were, even if they were also gigantic. And it was how he used them, the care and the focus with which he treated the weapon that was almost as much a part of him as his mask was – the same care and focus with which he did pretty much everything.

Whitney was a firm believer that every teen went through a phase where they were simply too mature for all the nonsense in the world. Sometimes it lasted years, and sometimes only a couple months, but every person went through it: the time where dirty jokes were nothing but crass and gauche, and why did _everything_ have to be about _sex. God_. And then once that phase ran its course, every single person reverted to the maturity level of a twelve-year-old boy. Where they then stayed.

As far as her experience with people went, this was the way of it. She was no exception.

Everything _was_ about sex. How the hell else would babies happen as often as they did? Because better sense would always be subject to the rule of the tyrant Biology. Capitol B.

That said, it was not rocket science to understand why her brain made the leap to someone who treated inanimate objects with such meticulous attention treating a bed partner just as attentively. Not that that was what she wanted.

Oh, who was she kidding? When her daydreams kept playing host to the near-rabid curiosity as to what her one-time captor might look like without all those layers of clothes it was a little pointless to pretend, wasn't it?

Yeah.

Well, she was in it now. Might as well get whatever joy she could out of it.

She grabbed an open package of cookies to have something to do with her hands and chewed at the corner of one. They were the cheap, generic brand sandwich kind with the chemical-sweet frosting – which said that either the people he'd relieved of them were either young or had specific tastes – but so far she'd had no problem getting through half of them. It was a pretty pathetic cover, and there was nothing surreptitious about the way she was eyeballing him over the food, but it was still better than just sitting there staring at him with her mouth open like a fish. Because she probably would have, given the chance. It wouldn't have been the first time.

She kept thinking back to what it had felt like to be pressed up against him, his hand against her side and his back against her cheek. Did so almost to the point of it becoming obsessive. She kept remembering how the muscle had bunched beneath his coat, proving that whatever bulk he had was his and not the result of padded clothing.

The remembering made her somewhat giddy, which in turn made her feel absurd, and simultaneously unsure whether she should be ashamed of herself or just fucking laugh. Especially when she repeatedly caught herself studying his booted feet and wondering with a tangled mix of curiosity and concern whether it was true what people said about the correlation between foot size and the size of…other extremities.

Oh, yes. She was in it now.

So many of the stories painted him as some vengeful, bloody patron saint pitted against the demons of premarital sex, or just sex in general. Whitney didn't think that was the case. His mother had been the one to pin that crime on the counselors that had let him drown, condemning them as having been too busy screwing one another to properly watch the children in their charge. The girl that had survived the incident those years ago had reported that Pamela had even said as much – loudly and somewhat erratically through her tears. The poor woman.

It was just a theory – though one she would have put serious money on – but she didn't think Jason knew enough about sex to care whether the kids he slaughtered were boning or not. He killed them because they came onto his land, not because they drank or smoked or fucked, or anything else. They were there. That was offense enough. Of course she had no real evidence to support it, after all just because a man didn't make a pass at her didn't by default make him ignorant, or gay. But she just...she had a feeling. He looked at her sometimes when she knew the expression on her own silly face would have been enough of a hint for most guys to realize she was thinking about what they looked like with their shirt off, but the connection just wasn't there. He didn't see it, and it wasn't because he was slow.

Just like he didn't have the social context to make him an overly-macho asshole afraid of his own emotions, he didn't have the context to understand human mating behavior – which she termed thus only because she couldn't necessarily assume he didn't understand it where animals were concerned. It was possible that if she'd been a bear or a finch he'd be able to tell. But she was a person, and people were stupid, _stupid_ complicated, and never more so (or weirdly less so) then where relationships were concerned. And so much of that came down to things that were socially constructed and had very little to do with the actual act and the possible result of children. Especially for women.

Whether her theory was right or not, she was grateful beyond all reason that he didn't seem to notice her being her creep self. She could wallow in her own overactive hormones in peace without the indignity of him knowing.

Chewing her cookie, she followed the path of his hand as he made another pass with the cloth. She would have sworn there was something almost loving in the way he touched it, meticulous and gentle. His fingertips followed the subtle curve of the blade with the same devotion she had once shown once Mike's biceps. Not to mention other things.

It was that easy. Her brain took the image and ran with it like a crazed cheetah on crack.

He was lying on his back atop her too-small striped mattress, coat and shirt gone – sacrificed to some other plain of existence – and she was straddling his hips, running her fingers over the naked plains of his stomach. He wouldn't be cut like a gym rat, but like an athlete, like a farmer, like a man who used his body the way it had been made by nature to be used. She would lower her mouth to follow the path her hands made with her lips until all that muscle flexed and strained, until those lovely steely eyes of his became dark with the same desperate fever she felt coiling deep in her belly. Not that he would ever let her do such a thing. Not unless she utilized those manacles, maybe.

Oh, _fucking_ hell.

She felt the tell-tale liquid rush between her thighs, and it was completely her own fault but damn if she didn't all but throw the package of cookies as if they'd bitten her.

Stupid cookies.

Stupid goddamn human brain and its stupid susceptibility to such ridiculous fucking _fantasies_.

Decisively she got to her feet, determined to shake it off.

There was no jangle of chain when she stepped from the mattress onto the dirt. He had taken to keeping her unbound pretty much whenever he was within the same vicinity, which was most of the time now, and which made it possible for her to get up and walk around the space when she wanted to so long as she stuck to the main big room. He had only needed to shoo her away from one of the branching tunnels once for her to get the message, but she got the impression it was more a matter of safety than one of control, since he had also taken to letting her wander almost completely out of sight when out in the woods now. She had kept her word not to try another solo sprinting expedition, and he trusted her to come back.

It was dangerous, that trust. It had the unfortunate side-effect of making her weirdly hopeful, which was all kinds of dumb. She had no business hoping. There was no hope of anything with this man. What was there to hope for with someone who had no concept of relationships? She could be his friend, although even that was debatable when her ovaries kept screeching like they were – the wanton hussies. But what could come of that, really? At some point this would have to end, wouldn't it? And then what?

At the sound of movement Jason looked up from the machete in his lap, cocking his head in a way that somehow managed to convey concern in addition to curiosity.

She hadn't really noticed before, but in that exact moment she became aware just how extremely attuned they were to one another. He could tell just from the way she stood up that she was agitated, and she could tell just from the way he moved his head that he had sensed it. In other people she might have called that chemistry.

Her laugh caught her by surprise. It left her in a wheezing bark which she quickly masked with a cough.

"Just needed to get up for a minute," she said, waving an airy hand as she lifted her arms above her head and stretched.

He regarded her steadily, and for the space of an instant she was positive he was fully aware that she was full of shit. Part of her hoped he'd call her on it, somehow. Put down the machete, stand up, and do…something. She didn't know what. The only things she could think of him doing were things he would in no way ever do, which wasn't helping her bullshit face at all.

Finally he gave her an infinitesimal nod and lowered his gaze back to the blade, allowing her to let out a breath and try to will her pulse into calming down.

She continued to stretch, channeling the energy into activity as best she could, all while mulling over the tiny revelation she'd just had.

Whitney had thought she knew what chemistry was. Books and movies all touted it as this electric, burning force between people, and she'd determined this was the natural exaggeration of fiction. Other women tended to spout this same story, talking of a spark or some bright, tingling connection. But when she had been drawn to boys before it had been due to what she supposed were the usual kinds of things; a nice smile, interesting conversation, humor, height, and so on. Mike had had all of these things and more, which was why she'd gotten involved with him to begin with. Things with him had been easy, comfortable, more so than with any other guy she'd dated – a comfort that had seemed unearned, but that had been so darn nice that she had leaned all the way into it. What was that if not chemistry?

Mike had been average in a number of ways, she had come to realize: average height, average built, average – if pleasant – looks, average smarts, average goals. Her kind of average, she'd thought, because that was all she had wanted. She didn't need something electric and exciting, just something stable, something real. It had never occurred to her that average might not suit her the way she thought it would, or that normal might chafe when hard times came knocking.

Mike had been average down to the blood in his veins, down to the core. It was that very comfortable normalcy that had kept him in the state of just post-college stagnation while she was spending her days inside a crucible being reshaped right next to him. It hadn't been his fault, or hers. It had just happened, the way life did.

She was not the same girl she had been two years ago. Hell, she wasn't the same girl she had been a _month_ ago, and even discounting the trauma and strangeness of it all there was no way she would have been able to stay with Mike for much longer. Whether his kind of average had been her kind once, it hadn't been any more. And it sure as shit wasn't now. As it turned out, her kind of average wasn't average at all.

Her eyes slid almost reflexively to Jason, and her heart skipped a half frantic beat when she found him looking at her – his gaze glittering out at her from the dual layers of dark provided by the corner shadows and those from the mask. Her very _skin_ seemed to wake up and pay attention, as though just the look had power she had only ever associated with touch.

And he wasn't even looking at her like _that._ He was just looking at her, probably because she was acting weird.

Yet she still felt her insides tremble as though all the little butterflies that lived there were rip-roaring drunk and all kinds of eager to throw themselves at the nearest available behemoth of a man.

She hereby swallowed all of the trash she had ever talked about those books and movies in the past. Turns out they weren't just selling false expectations after all. Who knew? Too bad none of them had had any advice on what to do when one _sparked_ with a serial killer.

Actually, she was pretty sure there were a couple that did, but they were nothing she wanted anything to do with. Because she was nothing like those women that fawned over evil people, who wrote them fan letters and married them while they were serving out life sentences in jail. She'd take _her_ serial killer over those garbage humans, thank you very much.

God, listen to her: _her serial killer._

Jason had gone back to work on the machete, apparently accepting that she was just in a strange mood (which shouldn't have been endearing but kind of was), flipping the blade over and administering more of the mineral oil to the other side of the metal. It was obscene, though it really wasn't, and she had to bite into the inside of her cheek to keep from snorting.

Bending to scoop up a passing rat, Whitney cuddled the little beast to her face.

"Help," she whispered into its fur.

A tiny paw pressed against her nose, a whiskered nose sniffing gently at her closed eyelid. She laughed, partly because it tickled, but also at the sheer hilarity of the situation. She just needed a minute or two. All too soon she'd be right back where she was, objectifying the man that had almost murdered her like the happy nutball she was.

Oh well. There were, in fact, far worse things.

* * *

 **NOTES:**

FINALLY - we've reached the month mark. Jesus christ I wasn't sure I was going to make it.

I can fairly confidently say I will not be filling up the film canon timeline of six weeks. I don't know the specifics, but I know we're not far off from the latter three quarters of the film events.

I just want to take a minute to share a bit of amusement at myself: usually dialogue is very difficult for me to write, which is why I thought this story - with Jason's particular proclivity toward not talking (whatever the reason) - would be easier than others I've written. HAH. Think again. I cannot tell you how difficult it is to write one-sided dialogue that does anything. I feel very much like Whitney probably does...like, how do formulate questions that can be non-verbally answered in a way that makes sense and that gets us anywhere? So it feels weird and stunted, but it kind of should? For as difficult as I find it sometimes, I didn't realize how heavily I lean on it most of the time, especially where building relationships are concerned. Think about it, we humans rely a lot on talking to figure shit out. I think a lot of why this character dynamic works is because of Jason's being something of a social blank-slate. Maybe I'm wrong.

On that note, what are your theories as to why Jason doesn't talk? Do you think it's a choice? Or that it's psychosomatic? Personally I think he's physically incapable of it, but what do you think?

It's also really hard to write this kind of naivety in a character. I don't mean it's hard writing a dude being the innocent one, I mean literal, hardcore ignorance of certain behaviors. Whitney's theory is bascially my own. If we considering where and when she grew up, it's likely Pamela was pretty conservative, and if she was a single mother and carried the stigma of that that still existed pretty heavily in the 70s and 80s, and add to that having a kid that's a little off...I don't imagine she got around to the birds and the bees talk. If she ever would have. Anyway. I know the whole "Jason hates sex" is a thing, but I don't really subscribe to it, personally. He never seems more or less apathetic or pissed about people that are screwing versus people that aren't. He treats everybody pretty much the same. It's one of the reasons I like him so much.

And as Whitney says: we're in it now, folks!

Thank you all so much for the love. I got several really lovely comments from some awesome people last chapter, and it really made my life a bit brighter. So, truly, thank you!

Until next time!


	12. When Your Heart is a Stranger

**CHAPTER 12  
** When Your Heart is a Stranger

~/13/~

 **Day 35**

Whitney had one goal when she woke that morning. Wash some goddamn clothes.

Summer was not high on her list of favorite things. She didn't do well in hot weather. She was much more of a fall and spring kind of girl, but if she had to choose, she would have taken winter twelve times out of ten.

It had to be deep into August by now. Every day for the past week had been hotter than the last. But today was the kind of day when the heat became so intense that it was physically oppressive. It was difficult to move and harder to breathe, difficult to think, or do much else other than lay spread-eagle on the kitchen floor and stew in a pool of sweat and light hallucinations. Or it would have been had she had a kitchen floor to wallow on. After four days of sweating through clothes, it had become clear that laundry was a thing she needed to address.

It seemed that after the hurdle of the shower (of which she'd had several more since the first), Jason didn't require much convincing to agree to take her to the stream so she could wash a few things.

So far, the acquisition of tools had proved her biggest obstacle. She had all but gutted the house's tiny mudroom searching for soap, only to find a half-used bottle of detergent tucked away behind a stack of towels. She was now in the kitchen, repeating the same process of opening and rifling through every drawer and cupboard within reach looking for something to scrub with.

"There has to be something," she said for what had to have been the thousandth time in the last five minutes, as she pried open yet another cabinet door and peered inside. "A sponge or a fingernail brush. Hell, I'll take a Brillo pad."

Rising up on her knees, she gripped the handle of the little drawer under a microwave she very much doubted was safe to be around anymore. The drawer was stuck, and crackled ominously as she tugged at it. She managed to coax it open, revealing a slightly mildewy pair of rubber gloves and a brand new, unopened scrubbing brush.

"Thank you," she murmured to the universe, seizing the brush and shutting the drawer with a gentle push. She turned to the door where Jason waited, one big hand balancing the bundle of clothes she had wrapped up in the oversize plaid shirt. Tucking soap and brush inside she took it from him, pushing her arm through the knotted sleeves and slung the bundle over her shoulder as she might have done a purse. Smiling up at him, she flashed a thumbs up. "Ok, all set!"

Reaching over her, he pulled the screen door open and held it for her to pass though - something he had done so many times now that it should have been easy to overlook, but which never ceased to instill a sense of curiosity into how he might have been raised before the untimely loss of his parent. Had he been taught to do it, or did it just seem like a logical thing to him? He did it completely unironically, without expecting anything, but the only reason she didn't unleash a mousy thank you every single time was because he had established it as the way of things long before she had been in the frame of mind to be gracious in any way.

They set out for the stream in comfortable silence, Whitney thinking for what had to have been the thousandth time how grateful she was that his company did not demand any performance from her. He seemed to enjoy it when she talked, and sometimes she did. A lot. She seemed to remember going on for at least forty-five minutes about how quickly plants would take over the world when people no longer inhabited the earth the other day. Or the time she had abruptly remembered that she had never actually told him her name.

"I just realized I'm a horrible person," she'd stated bluntly, turning to him with a face she knew was solid self-annoyance. "My name is Whitney."

He had nodded almost as soon as the name left her, his eyes steady on her face. Had he already known?

"You already knew? How did..." But she already knew how, didn't she? He had heard two different men spend their last moments screaming it at her before he ended them. Obviously, he had put two and two together. "Right," she had corrected, "Well, anyway. Hi."

It had been inane and utterly stupid, but she had seen the corners of his eyes crease in the way she knew must accompany a smile. Amusement certainly, and, or so she imaged, a hint of fondness, too. Which of course had set the butterflies in her stomach into a giddy riot.

She tended to talk a lot about idle, silly things. Things she remembered from childhood, or from school: for instance, the time she'd had her wisdom teeth removed and had been so high on Percocet that she'd been convinced the applesauce she had been eating was actually dog food and royally freaked out about it for no good reason. Which was a story he had seemed to find particularly entertaining. But for all he apparently liked it, he didn't seem to mind when she _didn't_ talk, either, and it was so nice to be around someone that didn't need to fill every scrap of quiet with mindless talk just for the sake of it. Like her, he appeared utterly at ease with silence.

He brought her to a part of the stream they hadn't visited before, where the water was deeper and faster-moving. She took measure of the spot, noting the large rocks that jutted out from the water, and nodded her approval. She didn't much fancy dumping a bunch of soap in a natural water source - was pretty sure she'd read somewhere doing so was all kinds of bad - but Jason didn't seem concerned, and at the very least she had to have some clean underwear. So, shucking her shoes and rolling up the legs of her jeans, she clutched her bundle of laundry and stepped into the water.

It wasn't exactly cool, not in weather like this. But it was still water, and the easy flow of it about her ankles still managed to have a faint cooling affect for which Whitney was beyond appreciative. She picked her way out to one of the larger, flatter rocks a few feet from the bank and sat, knees spread wide and bare feet braced against the silty, rocky bottom. For a few moments she simply sat there, relishing what breeze there was in combination with the lick of water about her shins. Once ready to get down to business, she hit another snag in the form of figuring out how the heck she was going to do what she had set out to.

Nothing made one appreciate modern technology quite like the lack of it. When the dishwasher broke, or when there was no washer or dryer in an apartment, people tended to remember how grateful they should be for the convenience of such appliances. Not to mention the time and work they saved. Whitney hadn't thought it was possible to miss a laundry room quite to the extent that she missed the one at home, but boy howdy did she miss it.

It took her a little while to find a rhythm. She knew how washing machines worked, but it was another thing entirely to replicate the process with nothing but a big-ass rock and a scrub brush. After some unsuccessful starts, she got it. Wet garment, lay out on the rock, apply soap to the particularly needful places, scrub with brush. Flip, turn, fold inside out, and scrub some more. Rinse. Smell test, and either repeat, or toss to the shore onto the plaid shirt – the first of her experimental scrubbing victims – to be dried later.

It wasn't particularly difficult work, though the heat didn't help. Just monotonous and repetitive, and with the potential to exacerbate the tendonitis that had been threatening to develop in her wrist for over a year – which she considered fair trade for clean underwear.

Jason stood at the bank some yards away, waiting patiently while she did her washing. He wasn't really watching her, exactly. She had no doubt he had an eye on her – that was just how he was – but he seemed more interested in observing their surroundings than studying what she was doing. Right now, he had his face turned away from her, casting his gaze out into the trees back the way they had come. That said…

Maybe she was just overly sensitive, but it felt a tad weird to be washing her underwear in front of him. Not that he was paying attention to what she washed, and even if he did, chances were he wouldn't see any more significance in a pair of panties than a shirt. She still hunched around them as she worked, as if to conceal something shameful, which was completely ridiculous. She didn't actually realize she was doing it until she felt the pinch in her lower back and had to sit up to stretch it out. They were just underwear, for goodness' sake. All but one of the four pairs weren't even hers to begin with, but had belonged to some other girl – some other dead girl. Whitney had made her peace with that rather quickly; after all, the poor girl was dead. What did she care what happened to her clothes? But for whatever reason she felt weird about washing it in the company of someone who could literally not give any fewer shits.

Rolling her eyes at herself, she lifted the current pair to her nose, declared them clean, and lobbed them toward the growing pile of wet clothes on the shore.

She hummed softly as she lowered the next item into the stream, submersing it into the soap-frothed water that moved lazily about her shins. She'd had the song stuck in her head since yesterday and couldn't seem to shake it – possibly because she quite intentionally kept to humming rather than actually singing it for reasons she didn't fully understand herself. It wasn't _that_ dirty of a song.

Well, ok, it kind of was; seeing as it explicitly talked about going down to the river and getting on one's knees…

So apparently she was developing into even _more_ of a perv.

Anyway.

She shoved the hair back from her face. It kept falling out of the knot she'd tied it in – a result of the less than ideal twine securing it combined with the fact that her entire scalp was basically coated in sweat.

"God, it's too hot even for ice cream," she complained to herself, "and _all_ weather is ice cream weather."

Jason was looking at her when she straightened to toss the newly washed shirt to the shore.

Her mouth twisted, adopting a not-quite frown. "I talk about food a lot, don't I," she mused. He didn't answer, but she knew it was true. "Sorry."

He tilted his head at her as if puzzled, and she realized it was a bit silly to apologize. He didn't eat, but _she_ did. Apparently, it was kind of a thing when one needed it to survive, and clearly her doing so didn't offend him.

"People do that, now that I think about it." Picking up another shirt, she shoved it into the water. "We talk about food all the time; what to have for lunch, where to go for dinner. How many calories are in this, whether that's bad for your teeth, about the article we read last week about how red wine is good for you and how the week before the same studies said it was as good as poison. Talk about first world problems."

Absently she shook her head, swishing the shirt around in the water between her hands to rinse out the soapsuds.

"No lie though, too hot or not, there's not a lot I wouldn't do for ice cream right now. My grandparents had this awesome house up in the mountains, and when we were kids, we would spend the summers up there with them before they died. My grandpa would help us make our own ice cream."

She could almost feel Jason's head tilt with curiosity, though she wasn't looking at him.

"You put the ingredients in a plastic bag and seal it really well, and then you put that bag inside another bag along with ice and some rock salt, and that freezes the mixture and makes ice cream. I remember once my bag leaked, my ice cream got super salty and so I stole Clay's when..."

Something twisted in her chest; a tumult of emotion flaring inside her like the sun hitting the glass of a windshield at the most inopportune time.

"...when he wasn't looking."

Her grip tightened ever so slightly on the scrub brush as she took a breath that shuddered like a tired muscle.

Clay had retaliated to the theft by pulling her hair, to which she had then responded by punching him straight in the nose. They had been young at the time, with him barely ten, making her a fiery - and bad-tempered - seven. They had fought so much as kids. Things had been better once they'd reached their pre-teen years, irony of ironies, until everything went to shit.

Whitney hadn't talked to her brother for over half a year, and even then it had only been the obligatory happy birthday call. He had dropped out of high school and gone off to live the nomadic, interesting life that suited his artist heart. And for as pissed as she had been and as abandoned as she had felt at first, she had come to understand that Clay was at his best when he was free, when he wasn't tied down to one place or one job. He had always been that way, ever since they were little.

In the beginning, he had called all the time, with plenty of interesting stories to tell about the places he'd been to and jobs he had done, and an ear ready to listen to her whine about stupid teem girl drama without a single complaint. He had come home for every Christmas, made it to several of her track meets. He had bought her her first drink on her twenty-first birthday. Then Mom had the biopsy, the diagnosis, and something inside him just...cracked.

She had forgiven him a long time ago for walking away. People responded to grief in different ways - they could only handle as much as they could handle. To the core of her being, she still knew and believed that. But as time had grown short, so did her tolerance for the visits that grew fewer and further apart, the phone calls that dwindled to no more than the very necessary. Before she knew it, they had had fewer and fewer things to talk about, and what little conversation they shared became tense and heavy with all the things they weren't saying to one another.

When she had first recognized the anger, it hadn't been about herself but about mom, who should have been able to see her other child more than for a few minutes every year. And even when she was forced to admit that some of her anger was on her own behalf, it was only really ever because she had always supported him when he needed her to, but when she needed him, he couldn't get over his own shit long enough to return the favor just for a little while. She had even broken down and called him a week before the camping trip, leaving him a voicemail begging him to please come home because she needed her big brother. He hadn't called her back.

So was so mad at him that she could spit nails, but she would have forgiven it all the second he walked in the door if he'd just come home like she'd asked…

She didn't want to think about Clay. She had known since finding herself in chains that on top of everything else, thinking about him would only break her like a twig beneath one of Jason's boots. It had hurt less to think of herself as an only child rather than to dwell on the fact that her brother just couldn't – or else _wouldn't_ – help her. Up until now she had managed to keep her mind off the subject with reasonable success, but even as she forcefully shoved thoughts of Clay from her brain she felt a scraping pain.

Nothing had changed. Best not think about it anymore.

Jason was still regarding her from his spot on the bank. He didn't appear to have noticed the abrupt drop in her mood, for which she was thankful. Mustering what scraps of a smile she could manage, she sloppily wrung out the newly clean shirt, droplets of water dappling the knees of her jeans.

"So what did you think about the ending of the last book?"

If they kept going through books at the rate they were, they would get through the entire crate within a few months. Just counting the ones she was willing to read aloud, because there were three she absolutely refused to. She wouldn't censor the books she read on principle, and whether he followed certain words or subjects or whether he didn't wasn't her responsibility until he stopped her to ask – which he never did. But she would not be reading what was tantamount to porn in front of him for several sound reasons. Not unless threatened with death and torment. And even then it was debatable.

Nor would she pick up the Arthur Miller screenplay, because _that_ was a punishment she had no desire to suffer through.

"I didn't expect it was going to be the architect, he seemed so harmless."

She heard Jason's snort of derision at her description, and the smile that had begun its life as a fake became real.

Tossing the shirt to the shore, she reached for the next one: the green tee she had worn for almost three straight weeks. She had debated bringing it, unsure whether it was worth trying to salvage. It was permanently stained, and ragged at the hem, but none of the seams had torn. Stains aside, it was still a serviceable shirt.

Slathering the thing with soap, she went at the discoloration in the armpits with double the vigor she had used for the last garment, wrinkling her nose at the instant darkening of the suds that were produced.

So that's what three weeks of sweat and dirt looked like.

 _Gross._

"I had this friend in high school," she mused, leaning closer to the garment spread out over the rock between her legs. "We would go to our local bookstore and leave notes in books for the people who might buy them: ones we loved or couldn't stand, we'd explain why. Or ones that looked interesting or had pretty covers, we would wish the reader a fun journey and to return the favor later with recommendations or cautions of their own."

Lowering the tee into the stream she swished away most of the suds before flipping it over and slapping it back down onto the rock. The spray of droplets against her arms and face cool in the seconds before they evaporated.

"We kept hoping someday we'd find a note left by someone else, but we never did. She lives in Seattle now—working for some big publishing company."

Movement flashed to her right and she glanced automatically, not at all expecting what she saw.

In the time she had spent in his company, Jason had never changed clothes. He never rolled up his sleeves or zipped up the front of his coat, and aside from the switch from sackcloth to mask; nothing about his appearance had altered by even a fraction of an inch. It was for this reason that seeing him shrug out of his coat right there in front of her had the impact it did.

His shirt had once been white, or maybe gray. It was an unidentifiable non-color now, so mottled with stains that it almost looked like some kind of camouflage, and riddled with tiny holes and torn ragged at the cuffs and collar. At first glance, one might have thought he wasn't wearing a shirt at all, the color blended almost precisely with what skin was visible. And nope, there was absolutely no padding in that coat.

 _Hello, shoulders._

Without the extra layer, it was easier to see the odd lay of the muscle at the right side of his neck, an uneven bulkiness that almost leant the appearance of a hunched or twisted shoulder. But upon closer inspection, it seemed mostly superficial, and blended smoothly into a broad, strong back that was clearly no worse off for it.

He sank into a fluid crouch, spreading the coat over an arm, and she was momentarily thrown by her own curiosity.

After all this time, why remove it now? Sure, it was the hottest day yet by far, but he had never shown signs of even minimal discomfort before. Surely he wasn't going to copy her? Although she supposed he might wash his clothes on occasion to get rid of smells, to avoid being traced and all. But then wouldn't his shirt be the more likely carrier? And now that she thought about it, she had never really noticed him smelling aside from…well, ways that were decidedly not bad.

Did he bathe? He must, otherwise he would reek like something unbelievable. After all, he was no different from any other man.

Jason's head bent over the coat as he peered down at it as though searching for something. His fingers skimmed down the back of garment, following the shoulder seam, and then his hand closed, gripping a fistful of fabric and pulling it taut, causing the line of his bicep to bunch and swell against his shirtsleeve.

Ok, she amended mentally. Not just like any other man.

Holy shit on a hot tin roof, no _wonder_ he could haul her around like a doll. He must have been completely different as a child. There was no way there could have been any promise of…well, _this_ when he'd been younger. Surely no idiot kids, no matter how bratty, would have dared to mess with him if there had. But, no, that wasn't necessarily true. He didn't carry himself like a man that understood the implicit threat in his size, and he was so sweet, even now – after everything. He would have been just like Ferdinand the Bull. Which no doubt was taken vicious advantage of.

Once again she felt a cold rush of righteous anger for the people that had hurt him. But her fury cooled quickly this time, for as she watched him prod at a spot beneath the sleeve of the coat she was reminded that in spite of them and their efforts, he was still that sweet, gentle boy. They hadn't managed to make him a monster, all evidence to the contrary.

Whitney scrubbed absently at the shirt in front of her, watching as he slid a hand beneath the coat hem to feel around, as his shoulders rose and fell in a soft sigh.

"What's wrong?"

His head angled toward her. Lifting the coat, he showed her the fingers that poked through a hole in under the arm, and it was such an innocent gesture that it pulled the smile from her.

"Don't worry," she offered, lowering the soapy shirt for another rinse, "I can probably fix that one too."

Slick as an eel, the shirt slipped from between her fingers to float off down the slow-moving current. She leaned reflexively to snatch it back, her body tipping sideways…and the next thing she knew she was sliding into the stream with a flail and a startled yelp.

~/~

Jason had an aversion to water. A fairly straightforward, logical aversion as far as aversions went, but it was a strong one. It wasn't that he feared all water. Rain didn't bother him, nor did the drinking stuff in the jugs which he brought to Whitney. It was when the water collected into larger bodies that he begun to feel anxious about it. He could tolerate the stream enough to wash if he had need, and would cross it if he had to, but any contact with water he had was undertaken with extreme levels of caution and what he considered to be appropriate wariness. Water was no friend of his. They were grudging acquaintances at the very best. He _did not_ go charging in without due thought and consideration. But the instant he saw Whitney slip sideways into the stream he forgot all about his caution, misplaced the aversion of over twenty years.

Panic seized him like a fist high about the throat, rendering everything else as inconsequential and unimportant as a speck of dirt. He was up and moving within the span of a single broken heartbeat. The coat fell, abandoned, the muscles in his back and abdomen screaming as he threw himself across the bank and headlong into the water.

She hadn't even gone under, her hair was still dry but for the ends which had slipped from the knot at the back of her neck. But even seeing this couldn't quash the terror icy and sick where it curdled alongside the adrenaline in his veins. His pulse had gone to thunder in his own ears, his entire focus centered on the urgent need to get to her – to seize her around the middle and haul her from the shallow ribbon of liquid death.

She was laughing as he clutched her to him. Her entire form vibrated with it, jarring in contrast to the pitch of his alarm. Water from her clothes was soaking into the front of his shirt where her shoulder blades pressed into his chest and he didn't care. He just needed her on land. _Now._

He turned sharply, bearing her swiftly to the bank and it was this, it seemed, which drew her attention to the tension in him, for her bright, sweet laughter quickly quieted, reshaping within the confines of her mouth.

"Hey," she crooned softly.

Her hand found his arm, resting there just over the bend of his elbow. Soothing, reassuring.

"Hey, I'm all right."

He couldn't put her down right away. He tried to, he truly did, but something in him simply wouldn't let him. It was all he could do to hold her there, feeling her breath, feeling one of her bare feet brush the outside of his knee as she dangled within his grip. She was just so small, so delicate…and yet she wasn't at all. Her size and apparent fragility concealed an unexpected hardiness, as he well knew. Still, it had done something to him to see her at the mercy of his greatest of nemeses, even if the danger had been exclusively in his own mind.

"I'm all right."

And she must be, otherwise she wouldn't have been laughing like that, so freely, so at ease. She wouldn't be speaking to him now as if she were gentling a wild beast. Which seemed an apt description, in truth.

Slowly he lowered her to the ground, bending until he felt the soft impact of her feet meeting the grass. But he did not release her. Not yet. Not even when she twisted within the tight circle of his arms to face him, her hand fisting into the fabric of his sleeve as her eyes darting to the eye slots of his mask, all the green in them swallowed up by warm brown. She was gripping the item of clothing she had been washing in her other hand and she cast it to the ground as he watched.

There was something inscrutable in her expression as she lifted that hand, something tentative as she reached, hesitated, and then laid her palm against the side of his mask directly over the place where his cheek would have been, her brow furrowing with gentle concern.

He could feel the heat of her touch through the perforation in the fiberglass. So close, so wonderfully, intolerably close to the wreckage of his right side…but he couldn't move, could do nothing but look at her, at her lovely face and the damp, curling tendrils of hair trailing down the side of her neck to tangle with the ribbon tied there, soft and deep russet where the water had touched it.

It was irrational to an extreme how much he wanted to touch her hair.

The rest of her was completely sodden. The denim of her pants had been painted dark and her shirt now stuck to her skin, clinging like a milky film to her form. Beneath it, he recognized the wire-and-elastic contraption, clearly visible where it had been strapped around her chest and shoulders. There was skin visible above the band of her jeans where the wet shirt hem had ridden up. Just a sliver of it, smooth and pale.

She was looking at him that way again – eyes a little too wide, lips parted, as if waiting for something –and radiating the same not-fear he remembered from before, strong and vibrant as a lit candle radiated light. Her cheeks had gone a soft shade of pink, a flush that traveled down her neck to vanish beneath the waterlogged collar of her shirt. And she smelled…different. There was something beneath her usual clean, pleasant scent, something different, but not entirely new. It wasn't the first time, he realized. He had caught it once or twice before; a musky sweetness that he couldn't identify. That was heightened inexplicably now, rich and heady.

He heard her suck in a sharp inhale, saw her chest rise and expand with it as she snatched her hand from his mask as if it had scalded her. His own breath had gone strange and thick in his lungs, as though a great weight was constricting his lungs in a way very different from the way it did when he was remembering what it was to drown. Drowning hadn't felt like this. Drowning was burning and pain, where this was aching and…

And…

He felt the delicate connection break as surely as a bone snapping underfoot. The moment was gone, though he was clueless as to what had caused it.

With another swift inhale, Whitney took a step back, extricating herself from his arms. Jason had to struggle against the urge to lock his wrists, to close his hands around her waist and drag her back against him. An urge as baffling as it was powerful. She turned, bending to collect the clothing she had dropped. His eyes followed without his direct permission, drawn somehow to the graceful arch of her back, flowing slim and straight into the taper of her waist – the swell of her backside. Then she was straightening, wringing out the shirt with a firm twist of wrists and depositing it with the rest of the freshly washed things.

She had just lifted her foot, preparing to step back into the water, to carry on with the washing yet to be done. His fingers closed about her wrist before he could stop them, the worry flaring in time to the whisper of heat that crept across his skin, curling like the charred edges of paper at the touch of hers. Her eyes fell to his hand with another flash of knowing sympathy that almost stung.

Swallowing his worry and his guilt he forced his hand to open, releasing her. He didn't need her to tell him she would be fine, though he heard her do so anyway. He knew she would be, knew that it was foolish, pointless, even, to keep her from her chore when the risk was so low. It wasn't really about the water, after all. At least not this second time. The reflex had been based in something else, and yet once again he was left staring down the gaps in his knowledge as they yawned wide and impenetrable before him.

He felt wrong. He didn't know any other way to describe it. Just wrong, as though something inside him had turned like milk did when left to sit too long. He felt as stupid as he supposedly was, as slow and addle-headed as the rumors painted him to be – stupid and shaken.

And _terrified._

Whether she had meant it at the time or whether it had been deception, Whitney hadn't made any indication of plotting to escape since her last ill-fated attempt. She had stuck close ever since, to the point where even when she wandered a little beyond his immediate line of sight he no longer felt the unease that she might disappear. It was only due to this that he allowed himself to slip into the fringe of trees as she turned back to her task, confident that she was beyond seizing any opportunity to run off and – as she herself had put it – get herself maimed.

Finding a spot shrouded completely in shade, he closed his eyes and took a breath, drawing in the scents of greenery and dry grass, bark and loam, the subtle, ever-present odor of plant-rot, and pulling them deep inside his lungs. Listening for the quiet rustle of leaf and creak of tree limb, he let the sounds fill his ears. He ground his feet against the soil beneath him, tipping back his face as he felt the subtle vibration of the earth in response.

He was forever tied to this land, to the earth and the power within it; bound by blood and breath and bone. It was all that he was, all that he would ever be. He could not forget himself completely so long as he kept the ground beneath his feet. He simply had to remember.

After another few moments spent immersed in the familiar, he returned to her, steadied, re-centered, and determined to shake off whatever it was that had made him feel like a stranger in his own flesh.

~/~

It had been funny at first.

The runaway shirt had been tangled between the fingers of her left hand where she had snatched it from the clutches of the gentle current. She had almost choked on her gasp at the shock, the sensation of lost balance and of hitting the water colliding with the pure relief of flopping in the water on a day hot enough to blister, and before she had even recovered her breath she had been cackling like a mad hen.

She had been barely cognizant of anything beyond the flow of the water around her or the shudder of her body with the force of own laughter. Even once Jason reached her, plucking her from the water and carting her to shore like the clumsy child she apparently was, she didn't notice the strain. Not until he had put several yards between them and the stream. Abruptly she had registered the way he gripped her, firmly to his chest, arms banded tight about her middle, coiled tight with a tense ferocity that didn't match her own amusement.

It took her a moment to understand. She was fine after all; her head hadn't even gone under. Then it had hit her: she had _fallen in_ , and in the split instant it would have taken to process that he wouldn't have been thinking about the depth or speed of the current, or of how very little danger she logically would have been in. It wouldn't have mattered whether or not she was a good swimmer – she was adequate, not that the subject had come up – just as it hadn't mattered that she had been spluttering and giggling the second she hit the water. All that would have mattered was that she had gone in.

And oh, _god._ Of course he was tense. She had scared him, deeply, for all that she hadn't meant to.

She laid a hand against his arm, murmuring calming reassurances while he stood there, clutching her to him as though he didn't know what else to do, and he was _trembling_ beneath her touch, which tore straight at her heart.

Gradually he seemed to calm. Yet even when he finally found the power to set her down he didn't let go, merely eased the strength of his grip so that she could turn around.

It wasn't necessary to see his face to know how far he was from all right. His body language was rarely so subtle that she couldn't interpret it, but now it was so loud that he might as well have been screaming. He had been so afraid that she might be hurt - might _drown,_ as he had drowned. The fear of it was fever-bright in eyes gone wild and pale behind his mask; and the way he cradled her, the way he kept hold of her, as if it wasn't really a choice...everything inside her softened, at once bleeding for the reasons behind it and melting for its own sake.

Half by instinct, half by impulse she dropped the water-choked shirt, not caring if it got dirty all over again. She lifted her hand, a tiny flicker of uncertainty stalling her reach for only a moment before resting the flat of her palm against the side of his mask.

Fiberglass met her palm, the once smooth texture rendered uneven by the nicks and dents of use and age and the pattern of tiny holes. It was neither cool nor warm. Nor did it give beneath her hand like skin would, and she found herself intensely dissatisfied that for all she was touching what served him as a face, he could not feel her. A pang of sadness floated through her to think of the kind of psychological damage it took to reduce someone to feeling more at home projecting a façade to the world in the place of their own face. Sadness and secondhand pain and a helpless, useless rage.

The pad of her thumb skimmed the faded red mark that slashed beneath his eye. There was a scar at the base of his throat, just to the right; a faint white line angling down toward the collarbone where someone had tried to cut into the jugular and end him and failed. That would have been a souvenir from adulthood, she surmised, perhaps when he had been first starting out in the killing trade. She couldn't imagine anyone getting close enough to scar him now.

Later, she would wonder whether it had been the closeness. In the moment, all she'd known was that she could feel the latent strength of his arms around her, feel the heat of his flesh through the shirt. She had been able to make out the shallow line that halved his chest where the water soaking her clothes had seeped into his, highlighting the broad slabs of muscle there. All of a sudden, the sympathy and care that had driven her to lay her hands on him was no longer about comfort. His gaze was locked with hers, staring so fixedly that even while she knew it was concern and nothing else she still felt her face go warm.

Then his eyes dropped, redirecting the force of that look downward, and it was with a sharp, reflexive inhale that she remembered she was wearing white, that her shirt would be as good as transparent, and thank God for the second bra that had been among the dead girl's things, because otherwise...

His hands tightened ever so slightly where they rested at her waist, and for a flickering instant, she was certain that he was half a second away from renewing his grip and drawing her back against him. The wildness in his eyes was still there; the fear that had haunted it, however, had gone. In its place was an undiluted intensity that went straight to her knees. If he had been any other man looking at her that way, she would have been beyond a shadow of a doubt that he was about to lower his head and kiss her.

The desire hit her with the force of a fucking freight train. She could actually feel her own pupils blow wide as the heat pooled low in her belly, deep and knife-sharp, making her breath come short and her thighs press together to alleviate the sudden liquid throb between them.

The drum of her pulse was deafening in own ears, and she knew he could hear it, knew he could feel the curl of her fingers against the thick bone at the base of his elbow where she had filled her hand with his shirt. She was more confident than ever that he didn't know what it meant, for there was disquiet bordering far too close to the edge of confusion in the tiny frown-like creases around his eyes. And honestly, she was probably freaking him out something fierce. It was just…

Normal, modern men did not look at women like that. Not with such earnest ferocity, as if everything he _was_ had been narrowed down to nothing but her.

Did they?

Heck if she knew. She was so twisted up by everything she had seen and been through in the past few months that she didn't know if she could accurately recollect what normal was anymore. She had been so molded by culture norms and expectations that she now equated certain gestures and emotions as signals of specific things – dislike, indifference, attraction – when just as often they meant something entirely different depending on context. Obviously he cared about her. He wouldn't have been radiating that low-level terror like a seismograph otherwise. The point was, just because he'd formed an attachment to her didn't meant anything beyond just that. She was projecting, and _he_ was trying to determine whether she was going to have another meltdown.

It took resolve and excruciating effort to step from his grasp without stumbling, but she managed somehow; measuring her breaths and carefully controlling every distinct muscle movement it took to turn around and return to her laundry.

As she made to walk back out to the rock serving as her work-surface, he had gripped her by the wrist, stopping her instantly. It had been reflex; she knew that. He was already removing his hand by the time she glanced over her shoulder to reassure him, clearly understanding that she would be all right, even if she were to fall again. But knowing didn't stop her from trembling on the inside like the world's biggest idiot. Even as he let her go, she found her mind spiraling back to the night of her last failed attempt to run, specifically the lightning quick moment where she had halfheartedly thought he would pick her up and haul her back against a tree. It had startled her before – scared her, even. The only thing that scared her now was how badly she wished he would do it.

Rattled, Whitney clambered back to the rock on unsteady legs, her knee-joints so compromised that it was a goddamn miracle she didn't simply collapse halfway there.

She had never been this turned on so quickly over so little. Scratch that, she had never been this turned on. Ever. He hadn't done anything but _look at her_ , but even in spite of the wet clothes she knew her underwear would be slick with the evidence of it. God, what would it have been like had he actually _done_ something?

It was a good thing that she only had a few more things to wash, because she wasn't sure she could have made it much longer without simply vibrating out of her own skin, she was so jittery.

She didn't noticed he had slipped off into the trees until after she finished washing, wading back to shore and looking up to find him walking back – moving in a way that reminded her of a wary dog. Guilt bathed her in a nauseous rush. Whether it had been the fall or her following weirdness, or a combination, she must have really wigged him out if he'd had to step away.

His coat was still in a heap upon the ground where he'd tossed it in his rush to her. Ducking, she picked it up smoothing away the bits of grass and moss that clung to it before holding it out to him.

"Are you ok?" she asked softly.

He nodded as he took the coat, but it came slowly, as though it had been a considered response rather than the natural one.

"I'm sorry I scared you. I would have been all right—"

His eyes flicked briefly to the stream before shooting her a look that conveyed quite clearly that while yes, she had been that time, it had not been a guarantee. And he wasn't wrong. People had drowned in far less water before. She had been trying to be reassuring, but now she felt like her words had made light of something distinctly not.

"You're right," she conceded, "it wasn't a given. I'm sorry."

He averted his gaze, looking down at the coat he held again as though unsure why it was there. He seemed a little lost, as if he had just witnessed something awful and was trying to remember how the world was supposed to work. And could she blame him? It didn't matter how much time had passed, how many years. Post-traumatic stress never really went away. It wasn't simply a memory that could processed and filed away like a piece of data in a computer file, it didn't soften and blur around the edges as the days passed to become rosier and lighter to bear. It didn't fade. Post-traumatic stress was _scarring._ It altered lives just as it altered minds, severely, and forever. He couldn't even talk about it, couldn't vent or think aloud, or even scream. The outlet had been lost to him.

She wondered if he had always been nonverbal, whether it was a symptom of birth or from the trauma. She wondered if it was a physical thing, a result of damaged vocal chords or a synapse disconnect, or whether it was psychosomatic. Maybe it was a choice. Maybe he had been forced to associate speaking with mistreatment, or maybe he had been alone for so long that he had forgotten how.

It wasn't a question she would ever ask, no matter his apparent mood. It was neither her business, nor a subject she had any desire to subject him to.

Hefting the washing into her arms, she began: "I need to lay these out so they can dry, and then I need to eat something. But maybe we could read a bit after? And I could fix that tear," she offered, pointing to the coat he was holding somewhat awkwardly between both hands.

He granted her another brief nod, folding his coat over the bend of his arm before he turned and started off.

She trailed far behind him on the way back. As far as she could without causing him to pause and wait for her, offering him the space he seemed to need. It wasn't a pleasant walk. She loathed the sensation of being in wet clothes on a good day – the clammy weight of them, the way her jeans chafed at the insides of her thighs and the backs of her knees, the way her soaked shirt kept riding up around her waist. She was about eighty percent dry by the time they made it back to the house, eighty-five by the time she had laid out her clean clothes on the grass to dry in the sunshine (underwear included, because who was there to see?).

Though Jason had asked if she wanted to change, indicating the state of her clothes with a brief sweeping motion before pointing to the bag of clothing, she turned the suggestion down. She had wanted to, and rather badly, but it seemed a better option to stay as she was. Changing would just cause her to fixate on what had happened, and she was trying her damndest to do the very opposite. Besides, they were mostly dry anyway.

He brought her crackers and canned vegetables to assuage the hunger she'd mentioned, which she had wolfed down between examining and mending the tear in his coat. It had required patching, which she had accomplished by ripping out part of the thick lining down by the bottom hem where the two halves had already been separating. Though far from a clean job, the stitches held when tested – which would have pleased her sutures instructor.

When she handed it over, Jason examined the little patch, turning the garment over in his hands. He seemed to find it satisfactory, for he slid it back on a moment later, which Whitney mourned silently to herself.

He still seemed agitated, so she suggested they go back outside to read. While he didn't so much as agree, he didn't protest, either. She quickly grabbed a new book and dragged him to the little open glade that had quickly become a favorite spot, shady and cozy and far away from any source of water.

Sitting with her back against the huge, ancient fir at the eastern edge, she kicked off her shoes as she always did and cracked open the book.

 _Charlotte's Web, by E.B. White._

There was a reason she had selected this one for their next book. For one, it had not originally been among the contents of the crate he'd originally brought her. Up until a few days ago, it had been living on the squat little shelf in Jason's childhood bedroom, gathering dust alongside its brethren, until one morning it had appeared atop the neat stack of volumes they hadn't yet read, innocuous and clear of dust. She had recognized the faded cover, knowing instantly where it had come from. Aside from simply leaving it there, Jason hadn't drawn attention to it, content to wait until she saw fit to pick it up. Now seemed a good time. Not only because clearly he had wanted her to read it at some point, but because he still seemed rattled by his scare and she really just wanted to do something for him – what little something she could in her position.

He settled next to her as she flipped through the blank pages at the front of the book, placing the machete in the grass beside him so it wouldn't accidentally stab him in the leg.

The weapon was almost always nearby, if not at the ready – right there strapped to his thigh, within reach distance – with the exception of perhaps three times that she could recollect. She had originally thought it was there to serve as a reminder, a subtle threat telling her not to be an idiot. After a while she had come to believe it was part tool and part comfort object, an unusual cross between a Swiss Army knife and a good luck charm. After seeing the scar at his throat, she wondered now if he had ever been wary when he'd approached her without it; whether he had worried she might try to hurt him as that other camper or traveler had fought back and – by no small miracle – managed to wound him.

" _Before Breakfast,_ " she read, when she was interrupted by a bird's musical call. She glared mockingly up at it as it flitted from one tree to another, sniping, "excuse you."

She might have imagined the minuscule sound of amusement from beside her, though she hoped she hadn't.

" _Before Breakfast,_ " she began again. "' _Where's Papa going with that ax?' said Fern to her mother as they were setting the table for breakfast.  
'Out to the hoghouse,' replied Mrs. Arable. 'Some pigs were born last night.'  
'I don't see why he needs an ax,' continued Fern, who was only eight.  
'Well,' said her mother, 'one of the pigs is a runt. It's very small and weak, and it will never amount to anything. So your father has decided to do away with it.'"_

And therein lay the other reason she had decided to begin this particular book, for there was a reason he had brought it to her. A reason which she suspected had something to do with the meaning it had for him. Her guesses, either his mother had read it to him, that he associated it with her and therefore comfort and love, or else he felt a connection to it for his own sake. Perhaps that he, too, had been or felt small and weak as a child, felt useless, unimportant, as Wilbur the pig had been. Or maybe he just liked the story. Not everything had to have some deep, intrinsic meaning.

Though she had a strong feeling this happened to.

They spent the majority of the afternoon that way, her reading aloud while he listened, alternating between watching the subtle life patterns of the woods and watching her face as she talked. She read until the words began to go hoarse. She would have kept going, too, if he hadn't reached across the space and laid a massive hand across the pages to block them. She had peered at him, an assurance ready on her tongue, which he had countered with a stern look. He tapped at his throat, clearly not willing for her to abuse her voice. It was such a clear resurgence of normal behavior that she gave in without protest, pleased that he seemed to have recovered at least enough for that.

They walked for a little while after that, Jason checking snares, all of which were empty, and resetting a bear trap which had been triggered – which had also been empty, thank god. She was still harboring a strong amount of dislike where they were concerned and kept a wide berth, watching the thing narrowly out of the corner of her eye as though it might acquire the consciousness and freedom of motion to leap across the space and chomp her arm off.

He sent her a questioning look as he returned to where she waited; though she wasn't sure why until his fingertips brushed her wrist and she looked down to see she was gripping the book so tightly that her knuckles had gone white.

"Oh..." She forced her grip to soften, feeling the effects of it all the way up to her shoulder muscles. "I'm ok," she promised, "I just—don't like the traps very much."

He glanced back at the trap, reset and veiled with brush and leaves, then back to her, dawning comprehension in his blue-grey eyes. He reached again, skimming tentative fingertips across the back of her hand in a touch that seemed almost...apologetic?

Whitney tilted her head, subconsciously echoing the motion he might have used to indicate curiosity or confusion. He was looking at her hand where it was folded about the spine of the book, not at her, and thus it was difficult to identify what might have been going on behind the shield of fiberglass. She couldn't be sure she wasn't only imagining the air of regret, or of guilt. Yet he seemed to be trying to communicate something, and was struggling as he rarely seemed to.

Slowly she let go of the book, cautiously stretching out her hand until the tips of her fingers brushed his; and when he rewarded her by closing his hand around hers, enclosing it within the warmth of his grasp, she felt her heart go tight with emotion. He squeezed her fingers once, ever so gently, before allowing her hand to slip from his, and she was more than certain now that it _had_ been a sort of apology. He remembered just as clearly what she had seen – and touched – that night, and had had no difficulty connecting it with her slightly unhealthy concern. What was more, he obviously felt _bad_ about it, which was touching, if unnecessary. She no longer blamed him for the things he'd done. They had been awful, and nothing could change that, but she understood better now why he had done them. He didn't need to feel bad about doing what he felt he had to do, or what he thought he was supposed to do. That he did was just further evidence as to how decent he was. How different from everything she had imagined him to be.

She experienced a swift pang of regret, wishing she could manipulate time and change all the bad things that had happened to him. People rarely genuinely deserved the suffering they faced, and while he was no more or less _deserving_ than anyone else, it hurt her heart that someone so naturally inclined toward gentleness had been robbed of the life he might have had but for the ignorance and intolerance of others.

He fell into step next to her as she started walking, something he wouldn't be able to keep up for long since the paths they took were often too narrow to accommodate more than one body at a time. While it lasted, though, she savored the sense of companionship. Of togetherness.

Her hand tingled where his had touched it, as though the warmth from his skin had been trapped there, and it was…nice. It was absurd and ridiculous, no doubt. But it also felt normal in a way she hadn't felt in a long, long time. She felt almost young again – returned to her actual age instead of weighed down by the mantle of someone twenty years older. She felt like a freshman mooning over the cute senior she sat behind in chemistry, caught up in something new and exciting and far beyond her reach.

It was an odd thing to fit her mind around. He was everything nice girls like she supposedly was were supposed to steer far and clear from: clear evidence of psychological damage, no job, no awareness or care of personal upkeep, still living in his mother's house, not to mention the killing people part. He had _bruised_ her. And yet none of these things were putting her off much, if at all. Not even the bruising, which she had always established as a hard line she would not tolerate the crossing of. She shouldn't _want_ to be any kind of together with him. There innumerable reasons not to. Yet there was not a single one she couldn't counter with a reason why it shouldn't be held against him.

Almost none of it had been his fault, or even his choice. And the things he had chosen were no longer things she could entirely fault him for, now that her time out here in the wild had skewed her outlook to something slightly savage. As to the bruising…well, it had been harm done rashly, in ignorance and uncertainty, and without other visible choice. It hadn't been ok, but it was forgivable once learned from.

People really were complicated. None more so than infatuated girls.

And that's all this was – an infatuation. A very visceral and physical one, yes, but it would pass just as all the others had in time. Even if he'd been a regular guy, and even if he'd been interested in her too, she wasn't ready for any of that. She might not have had a chance to break up with Mike, but she was technically fresh out of a relationship, not to mention all the other baggage she was carrying around. None of that made for good girlfriend material. Still…

She thought back to the way he had pulled her from the water. Only seconds had passed between her fall and his hauling her out – mere _seconds_ – and he hadn't been all that close. He couldn't have so much as hesitated, simply gone charging in after her, straight into the thing he had more reason to fear and loathe than anything she had ever experienced. Were she to look down, she knew she would see the legs of his pants were still damp.

She wasn't altogether sure she didn't fall just a little in love with him for it.

~/~

 **Day 36 (Day 1 of Week 6)**

To the casual observer, the woods were just that – woods. Old, dense, remarkably untouched at a time when such a thing seemed almost beyond possibility, and for the most part relatively uninteresting. But then there were many things that went beyond the notice of the casual observer.

Nine times out of ten those that visited Crystal Lake didn't realize where they were. They were unfamiliar with the area and therefore its history; didn't know to keep a lookout for abandoned mining tunnels nor the hazards that accompanied land once subject to such an industry. They didn't know to watch where they put their feet, lest they walk into a broken mine pit, or the teeth of a trap.

Nor did they realize there were weapon caches all around the grounds of the Crystal Lake territory.

A result of a surplus of time and having been caught off guard and unprepared one too many times, the caches consisted of waterproofed bundles buried and marked with a series of small stones that would appear random to any eyes other than Jason's own. Inside the bundles were extra blades, projectiles, lengths of rope and wire, and anything else he had accumulated over the years that might come to be of use in an emergency. He checked them once every four months, unearthing each to look for wear or water damage, testing edges and replacing anything no longer useable.

Well, he normally did.

The task was a lengthy one, eating up over a day and a half if he was as thorough as he liked to be. The better part of one if he wasn't. Which was precisely why this particular check was roughly two weeks overdue.

Jason glanced up from the bundle he had just finished going over, checking the depth of the shadows around him. It was late afternoon now, the light gone rich and golden with it.

It had been a long time since he had been away from Whitney for more than a few hours, and he was no longer entirely comfortable with it. In the beginning it wouldn't have concerned him. He would have left her plenty of food and water and got on with things until he was done. As time had progressed however, and as he'd grown increasingly more attached to her, his concerns had become less about her general wellbeing and more about his own sense of what was acceptable. Which, as it turned out, appeared to be leaving her alone for too long.

It was the height of summer, the time when the possibility of campers and hikers was at its highest, he couldn't shirk the duty any longer.

He supposed he could have brought her along. Yet every time he'd considered the idea, weighing the prospect against that of leaving her underground for an entire day, he had disliked it more than the last. The grounds were expansive, he would be traversing much more grueling terrain than normal, and he had to move quickly in order to cover the distance he had to in order to get back by nightfall. The risk of exhausting her and of dehydration, to say nothing of injury, had been very real. In the end he'd elected against it. And he felt the absence of her keenly as he might have felt a hole in his side.

He had grown accustomed to her being there; sometimes talking, most of the time a quiet presence nearby. Too accustomed, perhaps. A few weeks ago that would have bothered him, now he wasn't sure he could bring himself to care. Now he missed her nearness, missed her occasional soft outbursts of discovery, the stories which might follow. He just missed her, even in spite of the unsettled feeling the reality of that sparked in the pit of his stomach.

Wrapping the contents of the cache back up in the heavy oilcloth, he tucked it back inside the shallow hole, swiftly piling earth and stones atop it. If he kept to this pace he could work the rest of the way around the lake and get back to the house before the sun had fully reached the horizon. The rest could wait a few more days.

He had made it half a mile when the sound reached him; a low, reverberating hum the likes of which he hadn't heard in a long time. So long that it took him a moment of listening to identify it for what it was – the sound of a motor.

Coming from the lake.

Though another was closer, Jason backtracked all the way to the cache he had just reburied. If he would be dealing in any near proximity to the lake, he wanted something with range. Moving swiftly he clawed away the dirt and extracted the bundle, his hand closing around the bow and sheaf of arrows.

The noise grew progressive louder and more obnoxious the nearer he came, growing from a low drone to a rattling whine that wore on the ears. He tracked the sound to the southern end of the water, his focus fanned wide in case there were people about aside the ones causing the ruckus. Its source was a boat, a gasoline-powered streak of white and black and yellow. There were only two people that he could see; one inside, driving the metal beast in wild, arcing loops, and one being dragged along behind by a string, skimming across the surface of the water like a dragonfly.

Jason felt a chill work down his spine at the sight, the dislike strong enough to taste. People were bad enough. But to get to them, even from afar, he would have to get closer to the water.

He was _not_ pleased about the amount of time he had been spending near water of late.

It took some to scout out a niche close enough to where the boat was drawing its drunken loops and still well away from the edge. Planting his feet, he nocked an arrow, folding his fingers around synthetic fletching where it met the bowstring.

And he waited.

He was a good shot – a _very_ good shot – but even he had his limits, and the distance between himself and the boat was not insignificant.

The figure trailing behind went sprawling into the water with a splash, and the boat turned in response. Still he waited, tracking the path of the boat until it began to swing nearer his position. Then nearer still.

He raised the bow, drawing back the string with a smooth bend of the elbow. Comfortable, fluid. It had not always been so. He had poured time and sweat into the effort to learn, until the weight of the draw had become like second nature, and now that he was grown it was easier still. Easy as breathing. The memory of it was etched so deeply into his muscles that he barely had to think to aim, barely had to feel for the shot before it came. His fingers parted, releasing the string upon a shallow exhale.

The arrow landed perfectly, spearing right through the skull of the figure on the boat like a javelin.

A part of him almost mourned that he was too far off to hear the crunch.

The figure crumpled forward into the controls and the boat sped faster, aiming straight for the second person bobbing along in the choppy waves, cheering happily, clearly not realizing their friend was dead. He was fairly certain this one was a girl, though it was difficult to be sure until the instant prior to the boat colliding with her and the shrill pitch of her screams elevated above the roar of the motor. From where he stood, it almost looked as though the thing struck her in the head. He supposed it was too much to hope that the impact had killed her…

Slipping a second arrow from the rest Jason put it to the string, but he did not draw.

The boat driver had been on a relatively even surface and moving at an even speed, both of which he could calculate and adjust accordingly. Water did not move in ways he could follow accurately, and the girl was thrashing about to stay afloat, erratic and unpredictable. He couldn't guarantee he wouldn't simply waste the arrow. Not at this distance. Not unless she came ashore.

She turned her head first one way, then the other, likely trying to relocate the boat which had sped off down the lake surface to the west. Blood streaked her forehead, confirmation that she had, indeed, been struck there.

He knew the second she saw him. Her eyes narrowed at first, trying to make out his shape, before widening so much that he could differentiate the whites of them from the irises all the way from the tree-veiled shore. She went briefly still, as though the prey-instinct buried somewhere deep in her insipid brain had told her she might yet go unseen. Not half a second later the pitch of her thrashing increased, and he forwent any lingering hope that he might still be able to dispatch her from where he stood.

Letting out a breath of frustration he lowered the bow and remaining arrows to the ground. Even though he had neither hope of reaching her nor any intention of going after her he unsheathed the machete at his side, almost exclusively to feel the comforting heft of it, the familiar weight like an extension of his own arm.

"What do you want from me!" he heard her screech, gurgling the question that really wasn't so much a question as a demand.

It made him think of Whitney, how she, too, had thrown those words at him, over and over in those early days.

The girl took off with a wail and a flailing kick of legs, swimming off in the opposite direction, and a low hint of a growl rumbled from deep in his chest. Soundless, but menacing.

He would have to trail her, wait for her to come on land so he could deal with her properly.

Within the boundaries of his own mind he cursed long and loud, with all the words he had learned over the years that he wasn't supposed to think, let alone use, resigning himself to the fact that his plans for the day were long lost.

Slipping back a few yards, he immersed himself in the foliage. Masked from sight, he paced alongside from the water's edge as she swam, her body cutting a crooked, wavering line as she searched for a safe place to emerge. In some places where the trees grew too thick he followed exclusively by sound – reckless splashes and screechy, panicked sobs. As the minutes passed her movements grew more and more erratic, intending, it seemed, to kill herself in the effort of escape. Jason began to worry the blood he'd seen on her face had indeed been indicative of head trauma.

Whatever his feelings about people, drowning was not a death he wished on even the foulest of them. Besides, it was getting late. The sun was starting to dip low, angling its descent toward the horizon.

 _Come to shore,_ he bid silently. _Come to shore, make it quick._

She straggled on for the better part of an hour, her stokes slowing until they became little more than staggered bursts interspersed with long bouts of treading water. When finally – _finally_ – she veered toward land it wasn't to clamber to shore, but rather to duck under a little dock set within a shallow cove along the lakeside that had, he thought, once been used for swimming.

She was trying to hide herself, either in the hopes he wouldn't see, or maybe that he might tire of searching and leave her. A pointless effort, but one for which he was grateful nonetheless.

He wasn't keen on setting foot on the wood planks. Not at all. Yet this wasn't _the_ dock. And it didn't extend far out.

He eyed it dubiously from the shelter of thick brush, trying to determine whether he should risk it. From the looks of it the wood had been well treated last, for he could see no obvious signs of rot. He had a choice. Either he could wait her out, or he could end it. Again he shot a glance to the sky. The sun was low enough now that it was encroaching on evening, and he still had the other body to deal with...

A hard breath forced its way between his teeth. At the worst it broke beneath him and he got his legs wet. There were worse things.

That was what he told himself, at least.

Jason did his best not to look at the water as he stepped out onto the dock. It was still as glass, mirroring his distorted excuse for a face back at him. Shielded by the mask though it was, he would always see what lay beneath, no matter how thick the covering. His first steps were cautious, somewhat cowed by the creak of the wood, but the dock held strong and sturdy beneath his feet, and after a few more steps he allowed some of the tension to uncoil from between his shoulders.

His fingers traced down the gleaming edge of the machete as he listened. He could make out the shallow, panting pattern of her breathing, the lap of water against malleable substance as she moved and he waited, using the combination of sounds to identify the precise spot under which she hunkered. Hoping she was safe.

She had never been safe.

Swiftly he turned the blade in his hand and brought it sharply down between the planks, slicing neatly through skull and deep into the brain.

That was where he left her, to the water; to become food for the living things there and eventually disintegrate back into so much formless matter. Whether the blood was spilled on land or not, the tithe was still paid. The job still done.

But now the day grew short. The girl had proven far more trouble than she should have been, and there was still the issue of the other body.

It took him at least an additional half hour to follow the lakeside west to where the boat had run itself aground, wedged in the crook of a great tree that – due to some happenstance of nature – had grown to lean out over the water at an angle. The engine was still going, though it spluttered and choked as it rapidly burned through fuel.

The very last thing he wanted to do was get on it. There was absolutely nothing tolerable about the prospect of bobbing about on top of the source of his own death. But he didn't know what else to do. He could leave the girl's body to the lake. It would become unidentifiable in a matter of days, concealing itself. Even the boat itself he could leave where it died. Any possible investigation would run itself cold before it could get anywhere…but only if he removed the second body.

It was possible the risk was only in his own head. He knew little of how such an investigation might be done, and even if one was conducted, it was also possible that those who came to do the conducting would know to leave well enough alone. But he couldn't guarantee that. And now…even an imaginary risk was one he was staunchly unwilling to take, water be damned.

He used what remained of an old tire swing as an extra precaution against falling, not trusting his own balance purely for the anxious quaver in his pulse. Wrapping the end of the rope around a hand he tugged sharply, testing the hold of the branch and, as satisfied as he could be, he braced a foot against the trunk and climbed up into the belly of the thing.

The body had slumped to the floor by now. It was that of a young man, shaggy hair rendered an unappealing shade of orange from the blood that had soaked into it.

The first thing he did was remove the arrow – a task made somewhat less easy than it might have been now that the blood and brain matter were cold and clotted. It came free with a scraping squelch, and he tucked it away to return to the rest later.

Not wanting to spend any longer aboard than he absolutely had to, Jason hauled the corpse from the floor and heaved it over the side where it hit the ground at a stiff, awkward roll. He scrambled after it. Scrambled being the most accurate way to describe the speed and ungainliness at which he removed himself from the jostling vehicle. And after which he took a moment to thank the ground for being so exquisitely solid.

He left the corpse where it lay for a few minutes while he detoured to the nearest cache for something to wrap it in, returning with a dirt-caked length of burlap that was slightly too short to completely enclose the head in addition to the body, but would do well enough.

Once wrapped and tied as thoroughly as he could get it, he hauled the body over a shoulder and headed for the house.

By now it was well into evening, and Jason was bordering on irritability. Due to the interruption, he had not finished the task he had set out for himself, which meant he would have to devote yet another whole day just to catch up, let alone the extra half it would require to get through the caches he had originally planning to save for later. Which meant yet _more_ time he would have to leave Whitney alone in the tunnels with nothing but cold soup and rats for company.

No, indeed. Jason was not at all pleased.

At the exact moment of sunrise and sunset the world changed. There was a fraction of a second's worth of time in which the gradual increase or decrease in light jumped forward in a swift burst of luminescence or darkness – the birth, or death, of the day.

The shadows deepened sharply, the deep blue tones of twilight turning the sky to a bruised shade of yellowed-violet, and Jason quickened his pace. He made to cut through the campground rather than taking the long way around it, the blackened facades of the empty cabins leering like great, still beasts in the dark.

He was nearing the rack of canoes when something caught his eye, a pale spot amidst the dark earth and grass.

Assuming it to be an animal, he went to it, head cocked to one side when no movement was forthcoming. Tossing the body to the ground with a muted crunching of what might have been spine, he reached for it, his hand brushing rough cloth and synthetic strapping.

A bag?

His jaw tightened, irritation tipping rapidly toward temper. He and Whitney had come through this way just that morning on their routine trip to the outbuilding, and this had not been here. Nor had the smell. Sweat and chemicals, something…sugary and slightly too-sweet. Skin. Perfume.

There were others.

Dropping the bag with a heavy thump he turned on a heel and stalked to the power-box situated at the backside of one of the middle cabins – the one connected to the overhead lights.

He assumed the lights had been installed for the sake of nighttime illumination, so no one got lost or hurt or wandered too far out in the dark. Or perhaps for emergencies. They, like the camp's water, were somehow still connected to power, and when he threw the switch they flooded the path and surrounding area with a coarse and brilliant yellow light. It would be harder to run, harder to hide.

He went straight back to the canoes, seizing the one on the topmost rack and throwing it to the ground. Then the second, and the third. Each hunk of metal struck the ground with an ugly screech that would have startled even the most steadfast of night creatures. Yet nothing moved. Not by the canoes or the cabin beside them, not in the spaces between, nor behind him. No sounds could be heard but for the usual night noises of the woods.

They had been there, he was sure of it. And if they had gone, then they hadn't gotten far yet. He wouldn't still be able to trace the smell of them if they had.

He couldn't linger. Before anything else he had to see to Whitney. Still, it grated at him not to immediately initiate a search.

Lifting the boat driver's body Jason slung it back across his shoulder. Bending again, he snagged the pack by one of its straps to take with him in the vague hope it carried either clues with which to find the owner, or else something equally useful.

Casting a last, searching look out into the quiet trees, his lips drew back from his teeth in a silent snarl.

 _I_ will _find you,_ his exhale hissed.

He had their scent. Death was not far now.

* * *

 **NOTES:**

First things first: credit to E.B. White for the segments of "Charlotte's Web."

Hot damn this ended up being a long-ass chapter. That wasn't intentional, but the first three quarters of it kind of got away from me, so…you're welcome! Somehow I don't think anyone's going to mind the fluff.

Also, I apologize if the last scene is kind of meh…it's intended to be setting mood. I struggled with it a lot because I couldn't figure out what to cut and what not to and I kind of wanted it to be a little monotonous because that's the point, and I kind of just cranked the end part out because I wanted to get a move on. I also apologize for any errors, it only got one run-through edit.

Storytelling foreshadowing cliché is cliché and I don't care!

OMG GUYS WE'RE HERE! I'm counting day one of week six as filling the canon timeline and no one can tell me different!  
Quick sidenote: in the film it's pretty evident to me that the "omg he's got a dead body" is Donnie (aka Redneck McNasty), as you can deduce by the plaid shirt and general state of having no head. Since I offed Donnie way back as a means of getting the mask earlier (god the timeline in this movie is hot garbage) I reworked it so that he's carrying Nolan back instead, who still has his head, but I'd imagine it would set just as much panic into Jenna if she sees it's her friend with a hole in his head instead of a headless dude.

Also, I hadn't intended to talk about this yet, but considering the direction the first two thirds of this chapter drove itself I think it's a good time. I'm basing my Jason pretty heavily on Derek Mears, the actor/stuntman that plays him in the reboot – and yeah, that's a given to some degree, but I'm leaning into it pretty hard as far as the physicality goes. This is why he has blue eyes, fun fact. So Derek is an MMA fighter and pretty built, which would not be accurate for someone who doesn't work his body in the specific ways it takes to formulate that particular musculature. Therefore, as Whitney mentions briefly last chapter, Jason's not going to have that gym-perfect chest and abs, etc. He's strong, but he's not "ripped" as we tend to visualize it. But for the sake of brevity: I adore Derek and how he portrays Jason, and I also have a bit of a thing for arms. So here we are. This is fanfiction - don't me.

On that note, I'm going to shut the hell up and keep going. I've listened to the same track from the 2018 Halloween movie on repeat for the past two hours and I'm still feeling the energy so I'm going to ride it until it stops.

Quick shoutout to every single person who has left kudos or sent me comments. It is not overselling it so say that you made me incredibly goddamn happy, especially since this isn't exactly a hopping fandom right now. I adore you all so much. Internet kisses to all!

Until next time!


	13. Hemorrhage

**Chapter 13  
** Hemorrhage

~/13/~

She was really only vaguely aware of the passing of time. The light shifted around her with the onward crawl of the hours, brightening and warming to its peak before beginning the descent to evening as the rays streaming in through broken floors took on the luster of antique gold. But the day itself was one that seemed to both stretch on for far longer than it was and go by in a blink.

The morning had gotten off to a bit of an odd start. Jason had actually woken her for once, bringing down her food before the sun had fully risen, which he had never done before, and after rather sleepy trip to the bathroom he had brought her directly back to the tunnel as he hadn't done in weeks. He had done his best to explain, repeating gestures easily understood to mean _I go, you stay_ , but which didn't really tell her much. There had been definite frustration in his expression and his movements as he re-secured her manacles, a very stark dislike due in part, she thought, that he had to do it and in part that he had no way to tell her why. She, for her part, had reassured him that so long as he promised to come back eventually, she would be fine. And she had been.

He had left her with plenty of food which, though cold, would have seen her through a good two days. Though she very much doubted he intended to leave her that long. She hoped not anyway, or her bladder would straight up burst. The greatest downside was simply that she now recognized how spoiled she had become with all the freedom she hadn't had before. Which was kind of a weird way to think about it, since she had never stopped being a captive, or hostage, or whatever the hell she was.

It was very possible she was no longer entirely sane. Oh well.

Whitney spent most of her day napping – which she would almost definitely regret when bedtime came around – and reading one of the not-your-grandmother's-romance novels, complete with the moody, artfully Spartan cover depicting nothing more than a pair of cufflinks alongside a title she couldn't recollect a split second after rereading it for the eighth time. Everyone always said books couldn't be judged by their covers, but she had never found that adage to be true. One could always tell the particular kind of smut novel that took itself too seriously. As predicted, the book had been so awful that she laughed her way through almost all of it. Which, she supposed, was a feat in itself. Not the intended effect, perhaps, but an effect nonetheless.

The boredom set in somewhere late in the afternoon. She had been slowly making her way through a bowl of soup at the demands of her stomach – a surprisingly delightful potato variety that would have been almost excellent when heated – and trying to think of what to do for the rest of the night.

She wished she had thought to ask Jason when he would be back. Maybe not exactly like that, but she could have asked if he would be back tonight, or tomorrow. She didn't have to pee yet, partly because she had been neglecting the water again, but she wasn't above admitting that it felt weird not having him close by. It was hard to know at what point she should start to worry. Not that she supposed she had much reason to worry, considering he was the baddest thing in the woods. But knowing it wouldn't stop a born worrier.

She had descended trying, somewhat halfheartedly, to train one of the rats how to play fetch, although so far she had only managed to get it to chase after raisins sent rolling across the floor and to return to her. They were working on the bringing the raisin back instead of eating it first part when some of the bells overhead gave an abrupt jangle.

Peering up at the ceiling she scanned the wooden beams, trying to pinpoint which set had gone off.

Aside from those two incidents, the bells had been quiet, to the point where she had almost forgotten they were there. Was it more nesting rabbits? Another animal stumbling across the tripwire? A second later yet more ringing came as the line of bells strung across a beam almost directly above her head began riotously and frantically dancing, almost as though someone had gripped the line and pulled.

Her pulse jumped, blood pressure spiking in eagerness and apprehension.

Multiple rings separated by silence implied that someone had tripped and then paused to investigate...but animals did not generally investigate the weird unnatural thing over which they tripped. Animals got the fuck out of dodge.

That wasn't an animal.

Automatically her mouth dropped open...but no sound came. It was like she had forgotten how to speak, or else that her voice refused to be summoned. Why? Why wasn't she yelling? There was another _person_ out there – someone who could help her get out of there, help her escape, so why wasn't she screaming herself hoarse in the effort to get their attention? Silence would not help her, and yet she did nothing. It wasn't even that she couldn't. She just _didn't._ She just sat, listening, nothing on her tongue but her own breath.

There was a soft snuffling against the back of her hand where it lay clenched into a fist upon her lap, her rat friend come back in search of more raisins. She stroked it absently, letting her fingers fall open for the rodent to eat its fill all the while she gazed steadily – uncertainly – upward.

Minutes passed with no further ringing of bells. Or of any other sounds. They were probably gone by now, and with them her chance at freedom.

What the fuck had she just done? Why the _fuck_ had she just sat there gulping like a suffocating fish? More importantly, why was she not significantly more upset about it than she was? Because she should have been. She should be kicking herself, knocking her stupid face into the wall…

The creak and thud of the trapdoor opening was long familiar by now, yet it startled her so badly that she actually jumped. Spooked, the rat scuttled away, leaving Whitney to clutch at the heart hammering frantically beneath her breastbone, scattering raisins across the dirt. Half a moment later Jason came around the corner, and she knew immediately that something was wrong. It was all over his posture; the slight downward tilt of his head and too-fluid joints, an eerie animal prowl that only ever surfaced in the face of a threat.

Specifically, she realized, the threat of people.

He bore the unmistakable shape of a human corpse, bound, wrapped up in an off-gray length of cloth, and folded over his left shoulder. Unlike the last body he had brought down here, this one still had its head – left visible over the edge of the cloth too short to conceal it entirely. She could see that it had been a young man in his early twenties, at the oldest, with hair she thought might have started out blond before it had become completely saturated with the blood which no longer oozed from the clotted wound in his forehead. A narrow, perfectly circular hole stood out there, as though he had been impaled upon a piece of doweling or rebar. Or an arrow shaft.

A chill rippled through her, one which had as much to do with Jason himself as it did the close proximity to the empty shell of what had once been a person.

He was agitated. She could tell by the terseness in his stride, the sharp brevity of the look he cast her – little more than a cursory glance as if to check she was still there. Had something happened? Had he been injured? It didn't look like it, but…

He carried something in addition to the body. A backpack dangled from his other hand, gripped loosely by the strap. He tossed it absently in the direction of the workbench as he passed and it struck the edge, falling to the floor. Jason either didn't notice or care. He continued seamlessly on, disappearing behind the cluttered shelving and sturdy wooden beams into the corridor beyond where he had taken the first body, and after a moment she heard the heavy metal door she remembered from before shutting with a heavy, decisive bang.

Whitney blinked after him, stupefied, and more than a little anxious. She wasn't above admitting that the sight of another person dangling limp in his grasp like a puppet cut from its strings had a somewhat unnerving effect on her, regardless of why or how they had come to be there. It just did. Plus, she had no idea what he did with the bodies he brought down there, only that twice now he had done so, and that the first one had never come back out. Morbidly she supposed eating them wasn't out of the question, but as he'd as good as said he didn't really eat much – and keeping in mind the rate at which bodies would decay, especially in heat like this – she didn't think it likely. Thank goodness because that would have ruined everything. Yet in her time there she had never caught even so much as a whiff of what might have been rotting flesh. Just earth and humidity, the food he brought her, her own sweat. He must leave them deep in the tunnel, far out of range.

There hadn't been people on the grounds for a while. That she knew of. Because how would she know when she spent so much of her time down here? It was entirely possible he had dealt with more than just the two incidents after her own, yet he had never come back to her this way, moving like a big cat in the midst of stalking deer. Like death walking.

Her eyes dropped to the bag. It had rolled as it hit the ground and lay just a few yards away. Not a backpack, but a rucksack, khaki gray and a bit worn around the flaps and edges. And weirdly familiar.

Leaning as far as her chain would allow she stretched out a foot, hooking it over the back of the bag and dragging it toward her until it was close enough to grab. She pulled it into her lap, taking in the scuffs along one side of the front-most pocket, the greenish grass stain smudging the lip of the top flap. It was remarkably similar to one her brother had once had, even down to the deep side pockets and weather-protective leather base. So similar that it was almost eerie.

The buckles securing the top flap were already undone, allowing her to flip it back and pull open the drawstring. There was a bundle of papers resting at the top, creased and bent at the corners as though they had been removed and put back, folded and refolded, at least a hundred times. She removed the entire stack, smoothing them open over her bent knee...

And was shocked to see her own face smiling back at her in the form of a photocopied photo.

Big bold letters at the top of the sheet read: _MISSING,_ followed by her name and a description, and underneath, a plea to call with any information regarding her whereabouts. She was looking at her own missing person's poster. Which meant the bag in her lap didn't merely resemble the one she and mom had picked out for Clay one Christmas, it _was_ his bag.

Clay was _here,_ at Crystal Lake. Looking for her.

Whitney didn't know why the instant it hit her that her mind latched onto an image not of her brother, but of the mother they shared – just that it did. Ellen's face, tired and wan, yet still smiling from the bed that was now a mere pretense of a bed draping a skeleton of hospital equipment. Bidding her to go, to have fun. Promising to be there when she came home.

She had no reason to think it, after all, it was possible Mom had managed to get a hold of Clay when Whitney hadn't come home as planned, realizing something was wrong and sending him after her. But as much as Whitney wanted to cling to the fine, fragile threads of this possibility, her doubt was far too heavy for them to hold. Mom had had the same number she did, the same number that continuously went to voicemail and never called back. It was possible, yes. But as she turned her head to stare at her makeshift calendar – her tally of days, of weeks long gone – she experienced that cold, sinking sensation of loss and just knew.

It felt as though she had been force fed stones. Her stomach fell so low that it seemed to be pulling her down into the floor. Mom was gone. She was gone and Clay was...oh, God, Clay was _here._

Terror knocked into her with all the force of a kick to the ribs, so hard and fast that for a five full seconds she was sure she would throw up. She forced herself to swallow, forced air in through her nose and down into her lungs once, twice, and again, to stave off the panic trying like the devil to turn her vision black.

Clay was still alive. He had to be. The body Jason had carried off like a load of laundry had been a stranger, too short and towheaded to be her brother, even if she hadn't seen his face. It hadn't been him, but it _could have_ been. It might be still. It might have been Clay that had triggered the alarm, which meant he might still be out there, combing the woods for his sister and not realizing the incredible danger he was in. Or so she was choosing to believe. Because if she allowed herself to imagine him lying somewhere out there bleeding his life out into the dirt she would lose her goddamn mind, and on the off chance that he was still whole her mind was the one thing she could not afford to lose.

Her eyes rose to the mouth of the passage into which Jason had disappeared, blocked from view and choked with shadow.

It did not escape her just how much her perspective had changed since she had first come to be there, chained to this same wall. When she looked at her captor, she no longer saw a monster, no longer saw a sick, psychopathic bastard who relished the suffering he inflicted on his victims. He had never been those things. But just as she was aware of her own inner paradigm shift, so too was she aware that the man she had come to know was no more or less the killer than he had been then. His motives had not changed. _He_ had not changed.

The world had dealt him a brutal hand, misery after misery hand over fist, but people had been the epicenter around which all that misery revolved. They had taken everything from him. And still, after everything, she rather thought that had he been left alone, had his rage been allowed to calcify, to fade and flake away, he might have been satisfied with vengeance in its direct form.

But people kept coming. They kept setting foot on land that had become the sacred space of an angry god, disturbing it, defiling it, and thus he took his price in flesh and blood with his own hand. She no longer thought it unjust. Not entirely. Not anymore. She alone had seen the heart beneath the rage, the loneliness, the _exhaustion_. She had seen it in his sparing of her life and in his caring for her, in the fondness she no longer believed she was inventing when he looked at her. Still, her ability to now see those things did not erase what had been before it. He was still a predator; still the relentless hunter that had tracked her through dark forests to drag her back to her chains. Whatever she now felt about him or his reasons, he was still the man that had murdered her boyfriend in cold blood. And whatever he might or might not feel about her, she was neither so foolish nor naïve as to think that she might convince him not to kill again, even just the once.

Oh, she could try to explain, to try reason, but she could not hope to prevail over a driving purpose that nearly predated her own existence, and there was no doubt in her mind that no matter what she said, no matter her excuse – if he found Clay, her brother would die.

She had to get out. She had to find him before Jason did.

Stuffing the papers back into the bag Whitney whirled to face the wall and the metal ring to which she was tethered. She had already tried picking the locks to no avail and nothing within reach to try again, and even if there had been she was not confident in her chances of success. Short of breaking the chain, or pulling the ring straight out of the wall, she wasn't going anywhere.

Gripping the chain close to the anchor point she leaned hard, putting the entirety of her body weight into it. There was a piercing _screek_ of metal against metal that made her teeth ache, but no groan, no give, no crack or shift of rock. And of course there wasn't. She had known it was futile, hadn't she? She didn't have the strength or the mass to dislodge metal from stone. But once again she yanked, rising to her knees and bracing a foot flat against the base of the wall and pulling until the joints in her wrists and elbows strained and her shoulders screamed their protest. She pulled until she had to stop or else wrench her own arms from their sockets. It wouldn't have mattered if she had; her brother was still going to die, and there was nothing she could do to stop it.

Her hands went slack about the chain, links sliding between her fingers to pool upon the mattress as she sank back down onto her knees. Reaching, she gripped the rucksack. She wrapped her arms around it, coarse canvas scratching gently at her skin as she hugged it against her chest.

She had spent so much of the early days of her captivity fighting: physically and mentally. Spent so much time scheming and planning and screaming, burning through energy and emotion faster than she could generate more. By now she would have thought she had recuperated what she'd lost; tenfold now, since now it was more than her own life at stake. But as she knelt there, clutching the bag she had bought her brother – that she and her mother had stuffed with supplies and trinkets, maps and tools and silly, fun things – she felt wasted and drained, scraped as hollow as she had been after four days of constant stress and little nourishment. Just then, she didn't have it in her to struggle or to rail against the world or circumstance, didn't have it in her to do anything but stare into the emptiness, into the future she could not change.

She had thought she knew what hell was, but she hadn't. She hadn't been anywhere close.

This… _this_ was hell.

Her next inhale came upon a shudder, tears slipping from where they had gathered without her notice. As if from far away she could feel Jason approach. She couldn't hear him except when he laid the machete down on the edge of her crate, for he moved with all the sound of a cat on carpet, could see him only once he drew near enough for his boots to enter the edge of her periphery. But she felt him; a calm, warm presence somewhere close smelling of earth and leather.

She looked up when he crouched beside her to find his head owlishly tilted by just a few degrees, his eyes framed by the soft creases of his frown. He was tentative as he reached out to touch her cheek, such a far cry from the terseness of a moment ago. His fingertips came away wet, and she could see the question in the way his gaze shifted between her, the dampness at his fingers, and the knapsack she clutched like a direct line to the oxygen keeping her alive – a question underlined by a faint note of panic. He had left her well and come back to find her crying. Why was she crying? But it was a question she could not answer. If she told him, only for him to go off and do it…

A new tear began the slow, curving journey down her cheek and he caught it, brushing it away with the stroke of a gentle thumb that very nearly broke her.

There was such pleading in his eyes now, begging her, imploring her to tell him what was wrong. _I'll fix it_ , he seemed to be trying to tell her, _whatever it is I'll fix it for you._ But that was only what she wanted to see. What she wanted to hear.

"Let me go," she whispered, her voice wavering on a fine wire until it cracked.

He wouldn't; she knew that. But still she asked in the vain hope that maybe this time, maybe now, things might be different.

"Please, Jason. _Let me go._ "

He might not have heard her for all the response she got. He didn't move, didn't so much as blink, simply stared at her with that same insistent pleading.

Her temper flared, giving one final dying surge before the fuses gave way. "This is wrong," she whispered, hating herself for the harshness of it. The words felt like acid in her mouth but she couldn't swallow them, they simply scoured their way free, leaving her to lash out like a wounded thing full of fire and fury that were fumes more than they were substance. "This is selfish and wrong and _you know it._ "

His eyes flickered with something she couldn't interpret, something fierce and tender and terrifying all at once. Again his thumb brushed her face, softly tracing the arc of her cheekbone. So softly in fact that she hardly felt it, hardly had time to register the touch before he was rising to his feet, sliding the machete back into its holster, and turning from her. Turning to hunt her brother.

The sob was a force of its own making, wrenching itself deep from her gut and tearing everything in its path to get free. She knew he heard it, saw the hitch in his stride – subtle as it was – right before the pooling dark of the tunnel swallowed him whole. But it didn't stop him.

She didn't have that power.

Hands fisting into the worn khaki canvas, she folded the bag tight against her stomach, curling around the point of pain wedged like a knife up under her ribs. By the time she heard the trapdoor creaking closed she was busy trying to hold herself together, sure that with her next breath, or perhaps the one after, would be the one to rip her apart.

~/~

Jason's steps fell silent as he made his way back to the canoes. He would start there, where he knew for sure they had been, and circle outward from there until he picked up on their trail.

Not if. Until. It was only a matter of time.

Almost compulsively he rubbed his fingers together where Whitney's tears had dried upon his skin. He didn't know what had happened, only that he had come back to find her crying when she had not been before, clinging to the bag he'd found.

It had been unlike anything he'd seen her do before in all the days she had spent fighting him. Then she had been vibrant, thrashing and snapping like a creature in a trap – which, she _had_ been. But this had been still and silent and…empty. She had been devastated, and he didn't understand. He had touched her face, the skin of her cheek soft and pale as fresh milk, and he wasn't sure he remembered the last time he had so deeply loathed his incapacity for speech the way he had when he'd touched her tears and begged her with his eyes to tell him what had hurt her. He had been shocked to realize that at some point her tears had developed the power not just to affect him, but to gut him completely.

" _This is selfish and wrong and_ you know it. _"_

She had been angry with him. _So_ angry. He had seen it in every stiff, rigid line of her slim body, her tight jaw. The sharpness of her tone had cut more deeply than he might have expected. And she was right, he _was_ being selfish. He knew that. Of course she wanted to leave. Her life wasn't here with him, and his choice to keep her – fully knowing that – as if he could erase what was real simply by ignoring it, as if the longer he kept her the more she might want to stay there. With him. It was more than simply selfish, it was foolhardy in the extreme.

She hadn't asked in such a long time that he had found himself hoping. Of course, he had hoped before, only to have those hopes come crashing down around him when he'd come back to find her having fled, but then time has passed and whatever was between them had strengthened, warmed. He had no longer thought of her as a prisoner, or as a responsibility. She had become something else.

He wasn't sure if he was brave enough to refer to her as something so powerful as a friend, even if in his own mind. And now he supposed he should toss the possibility of it away for good. But he couldn't. Just...couldn't. Not the possibility of a friend, and not her.

No matter how wrong it was, he simply could not bring himself let her go. And as he'd knelt there beside her, loathing himself and his own silence, he had felt something rise up in him as the water had risen over his head all those years ago – powerful and all-consuming, and momentarily stronger even than the drive to hunt down the vermin desecrating his land of his mother's memory. The desire to stay.

Even now, as he began his sweep out through the camp and into the wooded paths, he found himself fighting the urge to turn around – to go back.

To her.

In another life he might have been able to. In another life, subject to another fate, he might not have been this – this _thing_ he had become. In another life he might have stayed. But it was much too late for that; his path was set, his duty written, and it could not be undone. The tithe _must be paid_. No matter how much he wished he could do something, anything, else.

He found them by the blackened, crumbling remains of the totem pole, tracking them by the beam from a flashlight darting about like a maddened lightning bug. Another set of two – male and female – and, from the smell of them, the two for which he had been searching. They ran right past him a hair's breadth out of reach, frantic breaths and heavy footfalls and nigh to reeking of fear. It would have been easy enough to catch them there, easy enough to end it, but he had thought it over the last time only to discover more, like roaches beneath the lid of a box that should have been empty. He would not make the same mistake again. And so he waited, watching from a careful distance as he tracked them through the eastern reaches of the territory.

They fled for the better part of half a mile, unaware that they were being followed across the boundary between territories. They fled until they reached the edge of the trees, bursting from them as if clawing their way from the clutches of the wood, and it was here that Jason finally paused to take stock of the property, the house into which his quarry raced, staggering and out of breath. The door slammed behind them, and Jason snorted, derisive. As if a mere door could keep him out.

Following immediately was out of the question. First he had to secure the area, locate any stragglers outside. Then he would be free to deal with the house and its occupants.

He skirted the edge property along the tree line, keeping to the shadowy places so he would not be seen from the quite expansive windows and scanning as he went. It was a large house, modern, with lots of glass and stonework at the exterior. The grounds were likewise a product of expenditure, featuring a wide stone patio which led down the shallow hill upon which it sat in tiers. He identified the external electrical panel at a glance, noting its position relative to the door through which the two trespassers had entered. That was no issue. The main problem was that the house was of such a strange design that he couldn't logically gauge what the interior layout might be from the outside, which had the potential to make things more difficult for him.

The man-made pond at one edge of the property forced him from the tree line. He headed for the outbuilding just beside it – a shed of some kind – its open door allowing an anemic yellow light to escape.

He slipped inside and was immediately met with the distinctly pervasive odor of alcohol, followed by the mutter of a single voice. Breathing past the fumes, he cocked his head and listened for a few seconds. Over the years he had developed the ability to distinguish sounds made by multiple people from those made by someone on their own. He could differentiate up to three different sources. After that it became difficult to isolate the amount of noise, but also became prudent to alter his approach. Four or more meant it was time to separate, isolate, and eradicate one at a time. It was quicker that was. Less messy. Fortunately, there was just the one in the shed.

Picking his way through the rows of open shelving Jason made his way toward the read of the building. He heard the harsh splinter and rainfall of breaking glass, and the light overhead began to swing from its cord, no more now than an exposed bulb. The mutters subsided to plaintive cursing as Jason came within view of the figure standing before a wall of tools. A boy, he thought, shorter and more slender by far even than Whitney was, staring balefully down at the broken glass littering the cement floor. He crept closer, lowering a hand to the knife at his belt and sliding it smoothly free.

No sooner had the boy begun to turn Jason had him by the throat, hauling him off his feet and bringing the blade up through the soft place behind the jaw. It was quick and silent, as he preferred his kills to be, and for a moment Jason merely held him there, waiting for the life to ebb into the twitches of dying neural-electric response before sliding the knife free and wiping it clean on the plaid shoulder of the boy's shirt.

Swiftly and efficiently the body was tucked up into the rafters to be retrieved and dealt with properly later – the last thing he needed was someone else happening upon it unexpectedly and raising an alarm, after all – and he was slipping from the shed and around the back of the house.

Amidst the lazy music of crickets he approached the stonework exterior, eyes open and watchful for anyone else that might have been wandering about outside on a nighttime stroll. He would cut the power, he thought, and see how they responded. Most would send one or two out to investigate, out of some sense of safety, or so he gathered, and effectively doing the work of isolating a bigger group into easily-managed portions for him.

Light poured from an unveiled window and out onto the grass up ahead in a pool of liquid yellow. Almost more habitually than purposefully he drew back, making to step around the illuminated space. Movement from inside caught his eye and he spared a glance to take note of how many people might be there. It was crucial to figure out the number he was dealing with and where they all were. The more he knew in advance the more effective he could be, and the quicker he could be done with it.

Beyond the window was a bedroom, inside which were two more people – yet another pair, male and female. But that wasn't what made his steps cease and his body go still.

They were sprawled upon the bed together, clothed in nothing but their skin. The girl was sitting astride the boy's lap, and she was moving in a way Jason had seen many times before. It was something people seemed to do; sneak out into the woods together, strip down to their skin, and fall into a writing, groaning tangle of limbs.

Neither the nudity nor the activity were new to him; he had dispatched many a pair of trespassers thusly occupied in his day. Truth be told, he had no real opinion on the matter. Whether they did it or not they still had to die. He would, however, admit that he had never fully understood why they did it, or what the appeal was – and surely there must be some sort of appeal, or such a broad number of different people wouldn't engage in something that looked so uncomfortable and frankly repulsive. What could be the allure of being wedged up against another person like that, sharing space and breath? What was the behind the drive to rub and strain against someone else, gasping and sweating, which they always did. It seemed an exertion of some kind, though he couldn't figure out how. And it always just looked so…well, _painful._

The nearest thing to which he could compare was when he had witnessed the occasional animal pair during their mating rituals. But that was always so straightforward. Quick and efficient, done with clear purpose during the proper season – not this long, drawn-out affair of rolling around and carrying on as if mauling one another. And if it wasn't that, then what in the good earth was it?

These were old questions, long since filed away and unanswerable, if he had ever truly cared what the answers were. Or so he had thought. But even the old, half-forgotten curiosity weren't the reason why he found himself robbed of his mobility and staring, caught up in the fluid, rolling motion of the hips belonging to the girl in the window.

No.

It was that for a split second his mind had taken the image of this girl and superimposed that of another in her place – with hips not quite so wide, hair slightly shorter, softly curled, reddish brown rather than gold. For a split second he was at the edge of the stream where she had been flush against him, the soft shape of her against his chest, his thighs. The gentle slope of her belly beneath his hand. He had felt her keenly through his clothes, the steady warmth of her flesh veiled by wet cloth, and all he had wanted in the world was to touch her; touch that narrow strip of skin between shirt and jeans, pull the twine from her hair until it fell down around her shoulders, her chest…but, no, that wasn't right. There was another word, a better word. It was slow to come to him, since it was vernacular merely overheard and not directly taught, but it did after a few moments spent with the image he had not realized was burned into his head with the permanence of a brand. Not her chest – her _breasts._

Something inside him turned over, shifting like the plates of the earth during a quake. And just like that he could feel her, would have sworn he could _smell_ her even as he stood there outside the window of this strange house so far from her – mild and faintly floral and rich with that strange, musky sweetness. He could feel his own pupils dilate; feel the blood leaving his head so quickly that he experienced a dizzy flash of vertigo. He felt the slow, languid curl of heat uncoiling in the pit of his stomach, spreading like flame – like poison – rendering his breath shallow and his trousers tight about the groin. The kind of heat that turned metal to gold and then molten.

It was the same ache from before, only so much more intense. Before it had been a niggling thing, like an itch, the sensation of a presence at his back. This was almost an entirely different creature, a force, a pressure that had his bones groaning like so much old wood, until it became not so much a yearning as a demand.

The girl in the window arched her back, the slim muscles framing either side of her spine leading like an arrow straight down to the rocking motion of her backside. But it was not her he saw, and it was not that perfect, golden boy beneath her but rather…

Pure shock sang along his veins like electricity, snapping him from his trance. He turned sharply from the window, staggering sideways until his hand met cool stone siding, all the while his skin flushed and burned and his head swam as though his brain had been submersed in dark water. He was shaking, from skull to the soles of his feet, and his pants…they seemed to have become tighter still.

He knew what it was. Rather, he had experienced it before – this strange, purely physical sense of urgency which resulted in the flesh between his legs becoming stiff and swollen as though from an injury – though it had been a very long time since last he'd noticed it.

It had always seemed a random thing: a response to some biological imperative his flesh apparently understood even if his mind did not. Nor was it something it had ever occurred to him to act on, even just to give definition to the response. For one, it nearly always seemed to come up at inopportune moments wherein he couldn't even if he wanted to, and for another such responses were always quickly put in check by exercise of combined focus and willpower – both of which he possessed in generous abundance. It had always been relatively easy to ignore, move on, and forget. And after those first two years or so it had simply stopped happening. Until just now, this very instant. All because of one random girl behind a window.

No, _not_ because of her. The blonde had simply been the trigger, not the real cause.

Another image of Whitney flashed through his head: lounging in the shade beneath a tree, head tipped back to the dappled sunlight which turned her skin to honey and made her hair seem to burn, her long legs stretched out in front of her, bare to mid-thigh. A bead of sweat trailed down along the slim column of her throat and into the shadowed valley leading down between her breasts.

In immediate answer the tightness increased, flesh suddenly straining against the cage of his clothing with a ferocity that transcended even the urgency of demand and tipped headfirst into need.

Jason had not felt true need for anything since before his death all those years ago. He no longer felt the pangs of hunger as he once had, nor the rasping parch of thirst. With minimal consumption came minimal requirement to empty bladder or bowels. He required no shelter, although he preferred to utilize it over simply dwelling amidst the elements – one needn't risk getting sick in order to not much care for standing in the rain, after all. He hadn't even felt truly lonely since very recently, though he had never really been able to tell if it had gone away or merely been silenced due to a lack of potential solutions to save himself the misery of its lack. Anything aside from the necessity of breathing, and the duties as eradicator, had gone from him. But _this_ was _need._ He had no idea for what his body was currently screaming at him to provide for it – _screaming,_ loudly and with excruciating violence – but he could recognize it for what it was at the most basic level as that.

He smoothed the palm of one hand down the tightness at his groin, willing it to subside. Which it flatly refused to do. If anything, the contact only made it worse, eliciting an angry throb that seemed to climb straight up into his spine – and a sharp, subsequent stab of alarm.

What was this? What was the matter with him? He had never been affected this way before, with such insistent force. For that matter, he had never seen a couple in the midst of a writhing, sweating tangle and thought anything outside his normal range between anger and disdain. Yet he had seen those two perfect people inside just then, behaving no differently than countless other nameless, faceless others that had met the edge of his blade, and for the first time since he had emerged from the water the drive to end them as quickly and with as little fuss as possible had been completely overpowered.

In that moment all he had been capable of feeling was the incredible compulsion to turn around, leave them to their trespass and go straight back to the tunnel. He wanted to unlock the manacles from Whitney's wrists, pull her to her feet, sink his hands – his _face_ – into all that pretty coppery hair. He wanted...he didn't know what he wanted. He _didn't know_. For all that his mind was clamoring with the upheaval of panic and horror and need, telling him to do at least six different things while his body could do nothing but twist itself into ever tighter knots.

What had been a strange and uncomfortable, but manageable phenomenon had suddenly eclipsed all of those things. Strange was now alien, uncomfortable was now excruciating, and it was nowhere near to manageable, but _powerful_. So powerful that it was nearly all he could do not to obey, though he had no idea what obeying might mean.

The sense of wrongness welled up like bile, thick and rank at the back of his throat; the feeling of being trapped inside the flesh of a stranger. A stranger who understood what was happening, while he was left to flounder, adrift within his own mind. It wasas though his own body had betrayed him. But then, he supposed it had right from the beginning, the instant his killing blow refused to land.

Almost unconsciously his head angled back toward the window, mind working furiously. There was something important here he was missing – something about them, something about why it had been this particular trigger to spark this madness inside him. Something about the way seeing them had made him feel like a boy again, if only in his own mind, beaten until he bled for having the audacity to look too long at a pretty girl.

Out of nowhere he felt the rage ignite, scraping like a match-head down the ridges of his ribs. Yet the result was not the usual cold fury of the directive, the honed, clear focus of his vengeance. It was hot, searing painfully bright within him as though his organs had been set aflame, charring from the inside outwards. His great hands curled into fists, the knuckles giving menacing cracks. His jaw clenched, back teeth grinding together until he felt the ache of it travel down his neck. He was _not_ that boy. Not anymore. And those children, these people, were nothing. They were vessels of wasted life worth less than the dirt they soiled, and they _did not_ rule him. _He_ was in control, not them. He would sooner cleave his own insides from his body than allow them such supremacy over him ever again.

Dragging in a breath Jason filled his lungs with humid air as he forced his focus to the ground beneath him, the stone against the backs of his knuckles. The need had begun to course through him in ever sharper pangs, and firmly he shoved it back, forcing the images seemingly burned into the backs of his eyelids to blur and darken. He was greater than them, stronger than some indefinable need, this cousin to gnawing hunger. He was more ghost than man, and whatever these urges were they belonged to a living man, not the shadow of one. He allowed the rage to flood in, washing away everything else until it was all he could feel. It was still too hot, too volatile, but he staunchly refused to think on it. Anger was better than confusion, than panic. Better than need or a wrongness he could neither name nor control.

He hadn't noticed his hands curling into fists until his knuckles scraped stone, the grain of it a textured rasp against his skin as he turned on a heel and started around the side of the house.

The power box may have required a key, but Jason did not. He yanked the metal door from its hinges with such force that he nearly pulled it from the wall, flipping the breakers with a flick of a wrist to plunge the house and the surrounding space into the calm cool of darkness. Not that he was capable of fully appreciating it. For once the dark did not soothe him. For once it merely seemed to exacerbate everything simmering between the layers of skin and tissue.

The double click of a door opening and closing reached his ears, and could tell by the precise, if subtle, creak that it was the same door through which the pair he had followed there had entered.

For a moment he remained still, listening, head cocked slightly to one side, combing through the night noises for cues. If there were footsteps, they were faint, cautious. Alerted now to the presence of something unusual, if not an outright threat.

Jason circled back around, hugging close to the side of the house – with exception of the illuminated window which he granted a generous berth – until he caught movement and stilled, vision narrowing in on the source. Another boy, alone, as the first had been. This one, however, was neither guileless nor oblivious to the dangers which might lurk in the shadows just beyond his line of sight. Armed with a poker and gripping what appeared to be a good-sized pan against his arm like a makeshift shield, he moved with a stiff, twitchy kind of caution that reminded Jason of a rabbit on alert – very much aware of his own vulnerability, the reality that any movement in the dark might signal something deadly.

Jason waited before following, battling the urge to chase him down by shaking his head once, sharply, sternly. He was not in the right temper for hunting. He had been backed into an unseen corner and was deeply rattled – _beyond_ rattled – wedged in a state of panic and urgency that was as unfamiliar as it was jarring and he should not be attempting to do anything but purging it, or else riding it out. But what else could he do? He had already begun the killing, and it appeared the others had already discovered that their compatriot had gone missing. He had no choice, now. After another generous few seconds he began to trail after the boy, who appeared to be making his way toward the shed – quite possibly looking for his now very dead friend – preceded by the nervously bobbing beam of a flashlight.

He allowed the boy to duck through the open door before following in earnest, swallowing down still more of the incessant urge to hurry. Haste was not an asset in this part of the hunt. Stealth and patience were, and regardless of whether or not he was in the right place mentally for either, they were things he _must_ be; which made it somewhat painful to stalk slowly when the very air in his lungs seemed to be demanding him to run down, to eradicate, and _now._ But he managed somehow – proving, if only to himself, that he was still master over himself where it mattered.

Light still trickled out from the slatted windows near the roof of the outbuilding, flickering slightly in a way that made it seem the interior was aflame as he slipped inside. Strange, the difference a few minutes could make. Before the light had just been a visual manifestation of the state of his prey. Now it was an avid discomfort, a claw scraping across the surface of a fresh burn. The dark was certainly no long the ally it usually was as of a moment ago, but the light was even worse. The light made him feel exposed in every glaring, uncomfortable way. None the least of which was to himself.

"Chewie, you in here?"

With the call and the shuffling footsteps to measure by, Jason surmised the boy was somewhere at the right rear corner by the chest-freezer, not quite opposite the wall of tools. An estimation that was quickly verified by the hollow clatter of metal meeting cement floor. Something had been dropped – either poker or pan to free a hand, or so Jason assumed. For the second time he picked his way through the open shelves, stepping out just as the boy straightened from investigating the freezer, dark hair and skin blending with the warm brown of his coat collar.

He had not yet found the body, though he was standing almost directly beneath it. But the boy seemed almost to sense his friend's presence, lending him a guarded sense of foreboding that made his silent stalker uneasy.

Jason didn't tend to clean up after his kills until he was very definitely through making them, when he had appropriate time and freedom to be thorough. Often this worked to his benefit. People tended to become scattered and hysterical at the sight of broken glass and a bit of blood, sometimes more than they did at the sight of an actual body. Just then, though, he wondered if this time it would have been better to tidy up a bit before vacating the shed. If for no other reason than to potentially lessen what happened with this particular victim. One that appeared neither scattered nor hysterical, nor any variation thereof, for all that blood was splattered across the floor and the freezer lid.

It was unclear what gave him away. He cast no visible shadow – he had made certain of that – made no sound, disturbed no detritus of gravel or glass, didn't so much as rustle the air in the close space. But something caused the boy to turn. Not the way the first did, random and unsuspecting, but pointed, for a reason; moving subtly, instinctively backward with the same inertia it took his body to shift around with an astute sense of perception that caught Jason utterly unawares.

He knew better. He truly did. He had been doing this for far too long to make such a blunder. Yet still he felt the reflex take him, forcing his arm to arc upward in a wild grabbing motion rather than reaching for the blade which would extend his reach, all the while his mind cursed him for the fool he was acting. The boy was quite fast, it was true, darting swiftly backward and out of range – hurling curses and insults all the way – with a speed that, while normally would have been no issue, was frustratingly effective in the moment. He followed, feeling his hackles raise like an angry dog's as he chased the boy down across the rear stretch of the shed. He felt heavy, weighted back and down as though he were dragging himself through waist-high water, and there was no reason for it. None at all. Which only served to add heat to his vexation, setting it to a dull simmer.

The boy leaped nimbly over the length of a saw bench and slid underneath, collar of his jacket just slipping from Jason's grasp.

Pain burst, white-hot, just above the knee.

Jason staggered, nerves at his outer thigh shrieking as the poker was withdrawn from where it had sunk into flesh. He bent on long-buried instinct, clutching at the wound as if to stop it bleeding, though he needn't have bothered. The damage was minimal. No ligaments or tendons, slower to heal than muscle strands, had been hit, and the bone had been merely scraped. But the sensation of it _stung,_ and far worse than he remembered pain being the last time he'd been injured…whenever that had been. It was so rare that anyone had the speed or accuracy to actually do him harm, and while it wouldn't last, the surprise of it directly fueled his anger. It was a combination of this, he supposed, and the frustration of his prey having managed to evade him even this long which caused his next swipe to be too shallow, missing the boy as he slipped out from beneath the bench and raced for the door, feet pounding out a matching rhythm to the blood pounding in Jason's temples.

What was the matter with him? Why couldn't he focus long enough to bring an end to one worthless human life?

But he already knew the answer.

It was the anger – this hot, blistering wrath. Anger he was familiar with, but not this kind. This was not he cold, steady rage with which he was familiar, the kind that only seemed to heighten his senses. This was wild and uncontrolled, and dangerous. It crackled and bristled across him like static, as though he might strike sparks against anything he touched. It was making him clumsy, delaying his reflexes, making him reactive rather than calculated. The exact opposite of what he should be. What he _needed_ to be.

Jason seethed as he surged after the boy, slamming a hand into the shelving as he left the shed and feeling no satisfaction in the answering crash behind him. A stupid thing to do, really. But at this point it hardly mattered. They knew he was there; attempts to hide that may or may not aid him later, but just now, he honestly did not care.

He ignoring the protest from the wound in his leg. He could already feel the broken tissues beginning to knit themselves slowly back together in spite of the pace he set, breaking into a run the instant he set foot on earth instead of cement. A place he relied on so heavily to move would take a bit longer than normal to heal, but it would in time. As he rounded the side of the building the gleam of the ax caught his eye; embedded in the old stump clearly used as a splitting block for the wood left out in a neat stack for winter.

 _Perfect._

He seized it, wrenching it free with a burst of splinters.

The boy was fleeing as though the jaws of hell were nipping at his heels and Jason gave chase, something savage in him hissing as rain did upon contact with hot metal as he narrowed the distance between them and swung the weapon over his head. He flung it, the twin blades slicing the air with a sound sweeter almost than any he had ever heard. A sound matched only by that of the meaty thud of one of those blades sinking deep into flesh.

The satisfaction he had been missing before flared in response to the clatter of chopped wood, the ragged scream of shock and pain tearing through a windpipe. And something about it allowed him to regain a grip upon the ferocity of his rage.

He took his time making his way to the woodpile where the boy had fallen, half in the hope that the cries would coax another person from the house to be dealt with accordingly. Not that any of those particular fish appeared to be biting. Yet that was only half the reason to measure his steps, to walk slowly. It was a precious moment with which to center himself again, to calm down. Refocus. Force the pounding in his head and chest to slow and ease. The anger was permissible, but the _heat_ behind it was making him sloppy, ineffective, and he could not allow that to go any further. He was stronger than the anger. Stronger than the cause of it.

"Help me—oh God, _help_ me, _please!_ I can't move…"

The boy was still screaming, crying out to his remaining friends, with only the faintest hint of a gurgle to tell the truth of just how much damage had been done. He was sprawled atop the stack of firewood, unmoving but for the crane of his neck as he spewed yet more pleas to fall on deaf, or else uncaring, ears.

"I can't die like this!"

One half of the ax-head was embedded in the boy's back nearly up to the head of it where wood anchored metal. The handle stuck out at a crude forty-five degree angle, and with a vicious sense of gratification Jason gripped it, hauling the limp body upward and around.

The whites around dark irises were huge and luminous with the primal recognition of impending death. The boy stank of it, sour terror and copper-hot blood, the ammonia of urine and bile. He screamed when Jason lifted him, screamed when Jason threw him down into the wood, the feral, gut-deep scream of an animal in its death throes. After the blades of the ax split him, cracking open his rib cage like the shell of a walnut, the silence which followed was both definite and calm.

Jason had already turned back to the house. Calculating. If the rest would not venture out, if they would not come to him, then he would go to them.

He was aware that he was somewhat larger than the average human. As a boy he had been on the lanky side, long-limbed and a bit gangly, but small. Yet in all his years of hunting he had never met his match in either height or breadth. He didn't think of himself as extraordinary, but then he didn't really consider himself human anymore, either, and so when he was able to do things such as lift a hand to grip the eaves of the porch at the back of the house and lift himself one-armed up onto the roof, it didn't occur to him that this might not have been something the average person could do. It was just a natural use of environment to his advantage. A use of strength he naturally possessed. Nothing more. Nothing extraordinary.

While he had precious little experience breaking into houses, Jason surmised he would be able to figure it out. All he had to do was find a way inside, find one chink in the armor that was the structure.

Simply smashing down a door to go barreling inside had never been an option. Jason was many things, but a deliberate risk-taker wasn't generally one of them – all evidence leading up to this point aside (it had been a trying night, after all). There were too many variables he couldn't calculate. One of the largest and most important being that he still didn't know exactly how many people he was dealing with aside from the four he had directly witnessed. However many there were, they expected him to enter from the ground level. He could see the beams of their flashlights flicking along the ground outside, diffused by window glass as they tried to spot him; using what little they knew of him to imagine they were safe so long as they stayed inside their shelter of wood and stone like the roaches they were.

He was pleased to find a window on the second floor had been left cracked by an inch. The pane of glass giving inside its metal track rather than needing to be broken seemed like the first thing to go right since the interruption of the people on the lake all those hours ago. It was a tight fit for him, requiring patience and some contortion on Jason's part in order to slip inside and to do so without creating a racket.

Not half a moment after he had taken stock of the bathroom in which he found himself the door from the hall began to open with a soft whine. Folding himself tightly back into the corner he enveloped himself in the thick dark, stilling his breath and his pulse, with a firm exertion of will.

He recognized her instantly, for all that he caught no glimpse of her face. The wheat gold of the hair falling around her shoulders was a sharp giveaway, and it was enough to make his stomach drop as though he'd been kicked.

The floor creaked softly beneath her bare feet as she stepped tentatively inside, peering about in the dark. Stupid girl. She _should_ fear the dark. She should fear the monsters it promised – monsters like him.

Revulsion rose like bile to pool at the back of his throat. He had an aversion to blond hair, and blonde girls specifically. They reminded him of the girl had that cleaved his mother's head from her shoulders, no matter how many years passed. But his dislike for this one was two-fold. Her fair hair nurtured aversion on principle, but what he felt churning in his gut as he watched her draw ever closer, reaching out with a slender, trembling hand to grip the shower curtain, was far more than mere dislike. It was disgust.

She disgusted him. The nearness of her as he moved silently out from the corner disgusted him. Her _breathing_ disgusted him, panting and overloud, her fear a soured note to a sugary sweetness near to sickening that must have been coming from her skin or hair. Yet there was something else, something sharper, stronger. It wasn't entirely _her_ that curdled the hatred in his veins and on his tongue, was it.

With a grating metallic slide she ripped the curtain back, and he could see her visibly relax, watched her shoulders loosen and slump when nothing was revealed – the split instant before his arms came up and around her, one locking tight around her middle while the other hand clamped over her mouth to seal her voice inside.

Muffled screams were a flare of heat against his palm, nails scraping at the back of his wrist as her body met his.

Instantly he recognized the mistake. He should have used the blade and damn the space constraints, damn the possibility of noise and being overheard – even the chance that she might have fled. Whatever sense or logic or reason he might have had to do so, he should _not_ have pulled her back against him.

The response was as involuntary as it was unwanted: a swift, sweet twist of longing that tangled viciously with the disgust and whatever lingering shreds of anger remained. For an instant he was lost.

There was an insistence in his flesh, a pull as fierce as gravity. His grip tightened instinctively, and he wished it hadn't, his temples throbbing at the ache in his head and in his groin. Everything was wrong. _She_ was wrong. She was too short and too full, too round, too...too bright and sugary sweet behind the stench of her terror. He didn't want her skin, her breath on his palm. He didn't want the shape of her against him. And yet he _did_. Or, that was what every nerve in his body seemed to be wailing at him in a war of impulse so violent that it almost hurt.

Fury and revulsion clotted like blood in the back of his throat, and he cast his eyes around the tiny room for something, anything with which to end it. If he ended her, he ended this. It had to. There was something sticking out from the back of the door, pieces of what looked like antler mounted there as if in some strange decoration. That would do.

Jason twisted, bracing his feet against the floor as he lifted her. She barely even struggled – didn't kick or claw or bite him, didn't do anything beyond merely wriggling and sniveling like a half-dead rabbit. Whitney would have managed at least two blows by now, if not three. Ineffective, sure. But she would have been trying. He might have thought somewhat better of the girl had she made even an _attempt_ in the defense of her own life, but she didn't. She just dangled there in his grip, with no more fight in her than her muffled whimpers as he thrust her forward and into the antlers.

He used force enough that the impact would kill her immediately. When he let go she hung limp and lifeless from the anchor like a doll, and while his sense of justice subsided, grudgingly appeased, the rest of him was no less agitated than he had been before. Killing her had not purged him of whatever poison was still swimming in his blood. His hand clenched into a reflexive fist, blunt nails digging into the skin of palm.

How did he _stop_ this? How did he go back to feeling normal?

A swift lick of awful panic struck him hard in the ribs – what if there was no going back to normal? What if this wasn't something that could be expelled, or even fixed?

The crunch of gravel and the flash of headlights preceded the arrival of a car. Jason glanced outside to see the flashing strip of red and blue lights crowning its metal body. He knew what those lights meant. Law enforcement.

Strange that they would come here…though he supposed that this wasn't precisely his territory, it was near enough that they should have known better. And now there was one more kill he had to make. One more body to be dealt with. For if he didn't, the man would ferry away those he was really here for, usher them to safety and out of Jason's reach – and the tithe would go unpaid.

That was unacceptable. Apparently a reminder was in order, as to why the law should stay out of business that did not concern them.

He maneuvered himself back out onto the roof, holding his weight to the side in order to balance atop the sloped surface as he made his way around the perimeter of the house where the front door stood. He heard the officer's shoes scrape the stoop half a second before the rap of knuckles against the door.

"Police," the officer announced, and Jason picked up on the put-upon tone to the word. "Police," came the reiteration after a moment of silence, "open up."

Jason crouched upon the overhang directly above the other man, bracing a hand against the eaves while the other slipped the machete from its straps with a near-silent whisper of steel.

Soundlessness no longer required much effort. When he dropped to the stoop just behind the policeman it was with a silence so practiced that he hardly felt his own weight behind it. Yet Jason suspected the reason the policeman whirled to face him had nothing to do with sound and everything to do with the menace he knew he was projecting in the worst way imaginable.

There was realization in the man's eyes as Jason's arm bent back, gripping the handle of the machete as though gripping a javelin, the slow dawning of belief kindled from ashes long gone cold. Before there had been none. He hadn't believed the stories, hadn't believed in monsters. Until he had.

Too late.

With a single powerful thrust Jason drove the blade forward, pointed tip piercing straight through the eye socket, punching through skull and brain matter. The blow went so deep that he could feel the blade slice straight through the door, reaching for the broken screams he could hear on the other side, the bloodless faces he could see whisk out of sight on the other side of the narrow windowpanes to the left of the door.

He heard the arrhythmic pounding of feet on wood flooring as they scattered toward the back of the house. It didn't matter. They were wound too tight within their fear to get far. He might not know these woods as well as his own, but in that much he was certain.

Sharply he withdrew the machete, metal scraping bone as it slid free. The body of the office slumped sideways against the door before falling to the ground in a heap, an empty husk of bleeding flesh.

The policeman's keys were in a jacket pocket, the ones for the motorized not-quite-bicycle still seated within the ignition. He lobbed them into the trees – two jangling pinpricks of light swallowed by the night shadows. No chance of escape that way. No chance of circling back around and attempting to flee with the vehicles. They had no way to leave but on his terms. On foot.

He had assumed they would flee through the back. It had seemed the logical trajectory based on their movements, and he had thought to catch them there, drop down among them from the rooftop like a cat among mice and have done with it in a quick, brutal – and highly inadvisable – melee. Yet no sooner had he swung himself back up to the roof and taken up position above the patio door then he heard the screech and bang of the one at the front, the shrill, incoherent chaos of voices.

He lifted his head, twisting to peer over the incline of the roof to watch the flashing arcs of flashlight beams blinking in and out like frantic fireflies between the trees.

The growl of resentment rumbled through him, a hot spark of anger building atop the still-warm embers of what had come before. He was starting to feel a shallow tick at his jaw, a result of having clenched it so tightly for so long.

Nothing could go smoothly tonight, it seemed. Not a _single_ _thing_.

He leaped from the roof, hitting the ground at a dead run.

It wasn't about having to chase them. He wasn't concerned about losing them, not with the sheer amount of noise they were making – heaving breaths and heavy steps, crushing brush and bracken underfoot. It was just that he wanted to be done with it. He had expended far too much energy, far too much time, too much _anger_.

The only reason he didn't simply launch himself into the trees and track by sound was for the sake of being thorough. Not even the coals of his temper would allow him to be anything less. Thus, he took a quick detour to the front path to find the place where the mayhem of tracks diverted.

Three sets of tracks – two leading one way, one another.

There was no real reason for choosing one over the other, no reason other than the momentum carried him easily in the direction of the trail made by one set of feet. But when he traced the source to the narrow gravel road, caught the glaring beam of the flashlight against rusted chrome, the gleam of pale hair in the weak moonlight, he was viciously glad of it.

He might dislike people on principle, but this boy – this perfect, golden boy…he _hated_. He didn't know why, other than to blame him as he had blamed the girl in the bathroom – a second source of all the fury and confusion and helpless, nonsensical need still raging inside him. Jason knew – and knew full well – that it had little to do with the boy himself and everything to do with the tumult inside Jason's own head. All the same, everything in him wanted to make the worm pay for it. In the slowest, most brutal way he could devise.

He recognized the truck behind which the boy hovered, knew that it came from the old farmer's lands. They must have veered close to the farm, then, especially for Garrick himself to be driving. The old man was leaning out the window to peer back at the boy in the road, waving a gnarled hand in a gesture which very clearly said: _come on._

Given a choice, Jason would rather not have dragged Garrick into the matter. But the choice was already out of his hands. Something which even the farmer seemed to understand, bony, vein-darkened hand drooping and the whites of tired eyes blowing wide as he watched Jason emerge from the pooling shadows.

Garrick said not a word as Jason moved up behind the blond boy, machete free and all but singing in his grip. Said nothing even as Jason plunged the blade through the boy's back to emerge from the belly with a squelch of organ meat and a watery shout of shock and pain.

Normally Jason didn't much care for cruelty. But even he managed to derive a sense of relish from the crack of ribs and the spill of intestines as he tucked his empty palm beneath the end of the blade and lifted the boy clean off the ground with it, the choked, sucking sounds of air dragging in and out of lungs too panicked to properly process it. The pain seemed to be so excruciating that the boy couldn't muster the energy to scream, though his face contorted with it, wrenching and twitching – which Jason drank in as he watched, vengeful satisfaction burning in his chest.

Yet for as fierce as it had been upon igniting, the hot flare of victory did not last. Within seconds the almost feral glee soured, and suddenly Jason found himself repulsed by the slow shuddering death taking place between his hands, by the boy, by the entire situation in which he found himself. The situation which now just felt like one intensely vicious mistake.

He had never before enjoyed killing – not even the first girl, all those years ago – and in spite of the brief glint of justice it had granted, inflicting pain this way, rather than simply meting out death as he usually did…he _vehemently_ did not like it.

The truck's engine was spluttering, flooding with fuel as the farmer tried to start it too fast. Out of the very corner of the eye-hole Jason could see the old man shaking his head through the cab's rear window, over and over, as if to tell himself what he was seeing wasn't real. Jason felt another minute pang of regret, but it didn't stop him from pitching the convulsing body onto the prongs of the hay baler seated in the bed of the truck just as the ignition caught with a roar. Gravel and scree kicked up as the tires crunched, propelling the truck forward, carrying the now very dead boy splayed between the red glare of taillights.

Jason stood in the center of the narrow road, watching the truck speed wildly around a corner and out of sight, the body at its back looking not unlike a far bloodier depiction of Christ he had once seen in his mother's bible. The sight was a gruesome one, and he was unsettled by the mingled disgust and exhaustion he felt as the last dragging foot disappeared.

To say the night had not gone according to plan was an understatement in the extreme. He had been meant to check one more cache near the lakeside and head back home, to bring Whitney her dinner and maybe bring her outside for an evening walk after. The afternoon sky had hinted at a beautiful sunset that he knew she would have liked, and had gone to waste all because humans seemed incapable of leaving him and his lands in peace.

He felt a dull throb somewhere in his chest.

All he wanted right there in that moment was to see her, to touch the soft skin at the inside of her wrist and feel the pulse, the _life_ there. He wanted to replace the smells of blood and dirt and chemicals with that of her hair. He wanted to be near her, even if she was still near vibrating out of her skin in her anger at him. But he couldn't just yet. There were still two more people somewhere in the woods.

He could recall that their tracks had been leading roughly southwest, though he backtracked until he relocated the trail just to be sure. Tracking their steps would be faster than guesswork, and after everything else, he just wanted to finish it. The longer he followed the trail however, the more concern began to outweigh his weariness.

The southwestern trajectory had been correct and, for all that the two of them were stumbling around in the dark, seemed to be maintaining. If that was true, then they were headed straight for the campground. And the house.

And her.

* * *

 **NOTES:**

Hello, loves.

I'm sorry for the wait on this one, it's been a busy and somewhat stressful month and it was not super conducive to writing except in short bursts. I literally cranked the last part out today even though I feel like shit because I needed something positive.

Quick note – we're maybe about halfway through the entirety of what I have plotted out for this story, give or take. I've gotten a few comments that seem concerned about how the movie parts are going to affect the relationship development and I just wanted to put that out there, so rest easy.

Oooooook. The shed/house hunting sequence. Don't get me wrong, there is a lot I love about it. It's very classic in that it catches the feel of the original two Friday final girls being trapped in the cabins and unable to see shit and it feels very real and terrifying. It's also totally ridiculous in that nothing about the timing makes sense. I changed a LOT. Which is part of why writing it took me so long, because I had no idea going in how I was going to write it with the exception of one very specific part (which is a whole other ball of wax).

But there's just so much about this sequence that feels wrong. I hate Chewie's death because it's unnecessarily slow (you cannot tell me Jason would not have just snapped that twig of a kid like a matchstick). And yes, Lawrence is fast and darts around, I can't really see Jason not machetefying him after just a few seconds of that fuss. However, then we don't get that glorious ax-throw. So my Deus ex Machina is the whole being mentally thrown off his axis by emotion – rather like the Donnie situation. I can't actually tell at what point Brie ends up in the actual bathroom. Either there are three separate doors in that bathroom or she started in a hall and we didn't see her change settings. Bad spatial directing.

Then when the cop shows up Jason has to get out of the bathroom, all the way out to the path where Lawrence drops the poker, get back on the roof, cross the house in a matter of maybe a minute, maximum, to get there in time to perform eyeball-impalement. Not physically possible even for my slightly more-than-humanly-enhanced Jason. Not to mention all the back and forth, around and up and down that goes on after that.

Anyway. It was hard. But now that that's out of the way I feel like I know where I'm going again.

And I guess I should talk about the moment of voyeurism through the window. When I was first contemplating writing this fic, that was one of the first ideas/images in my head and it was a STRONG one. But because of that it was excruciatingly difficult to write. I'm still not confident I did justice to what was in my head, and through it I've been fretting about whether or not I've actually done the work to make it feel earned (not sure), which added to the time it took to update.

Ugh. It's been a process. But here we are. I hope I didn't lose too many of you here, for whatever reason, though I understand if I did. Hopefully the next wait won't be so long.

A GINORMOUS THANK YOU to all of you for the kudos, and to those of you leaving me such wonderful, engaging comments that allow me to both fangirl and commiserate and bond with you, you are the actual best and I adore you.

Until next time!


	14. Take What's Mine

**Chapter 14  
** Take What's Mine

~/13/~

Whitney didn't know how many times she cycled through stages of rage, hopelessness, grief, and despair as she sat there in her corner.

She was at once cataclysmically lethargic and spiraling in and out of dizzying waves of mania. The feeling of uselessness seemed to be trying to claw its way out of her by way of her brain combing over potential solutions already dismissed as impossible at least thirty times before, as if to do that was at least to be doing something when to do nothing was…well, unacceptable.

After what had felt like a literal deluge of tears, she no longer had the energy to cry, alternating instead between long moments spent silently clinging to Clay's bag and short, ferocious outbursts of crackling anger. Most of which resulted in throwing things. The first victim of her irrational temper was a bowl of long-cold soup hurled across the room, its contents spilling as the vessel clattered to the dirt. Several books had followed, and then the bag – which she had regretted almost immediately. She had kicked the metal grate at her left so hard that her foot still ached twenty minutes later. It was, all of it, stupid and pointless and a waste of energy. But the worst thing had been purely accidental. During a particularly violent yank on her chains she had knocked an elbow into the little green glass bottle, causing it to tip over the edge of the crate and break.

Leaning over the crate, she reached to brush careful fingers across the curve of a piece of glass, regret churning sloppily in her stomach.

 _Damn_ it.

For all that there were no tears left, her eyes burned with the reflex to cry. Yet the non-tears weren't really about the bottle, even though it had been a gift sweetly given and she had just destroyed it. The guilt was about something else.

It hadn't taken her long to wish she had kept her mouth shut, to just swallow the venom crafted out of fear instead of unleashing it like a weapon. She could tell herself that she hadn't meant it to be hurtful all she liked, but it didn't make it true. She had _wanted_ it to sting. She had wanted Jason to hurt the way she hurt, if only for a split second. So she had thrown the insult and leaned back on feelings of victimhood to justify it, and _God,_ she wished she hadn't.

She wasn't really angry at him anyway. Well, she was…but not in any concrete way. She supposed she could be angry that he was still refusing to end her captivity, but could she really blame him? Truly? At worst she was a risk, a possible threat to the status quo he had forged for himself. At best he simply didn't want to be left alone again, and that wasn't something she could be mad at. She couldn't be angry with Jason for being what he was, especially not when she could have explained her point of view but had chosen not to. That was all her.

She should have told him. She should have just fucking risked it, to hell with whatever it might have done to her – because then at least she could have comforted herself with the knowledge that at least she had tried. But she hadn't for reasons that she would never be able to look back on as anything but irrational. Too irrational to simply _ask._

More than anything else, she was angry at the circumstances, at all the things that had lined up just so to bring them there. She was angry with herself for letting Mike drag her here into the middle of nowhere, resulting in his own death and her imprisonment; because if she had just told him no – not even broken things off but simply turned the offer down – she wouldn't be here, which meant she would still be home and Clay wouldn't have had to come looking for her. But if she had said no, then she never would have…

Never have what – never have met a murderer?

The thought brought a dull ache to her chest that she didn't expect, and which promptly frustrated her.

She had no business being sad about the mere possibility of having never gone through this episode of torment as if she would have been _missing out_ on something, and not just because it was silly to think about might-have-beens when nothing could change what had happened. It was just _so_ fucked up to think that way. Yet she couldn't really help it. Denying that she had connected to Jason on a human level was pointless now. She could no more deny it then deny the cuffs at her wrists, and maybe that made her well and thoroughly Stockholmed, but she didn't give a single flying fuck anymore. None of that mattered now. She was sitting here in the dark waiting for him to come back, possibly lugging her brother's corpse behind him, knowing that it would kill everything that had been built up so precariously between them. And the _truly_ sick thing was she wasn't sure which she mourned more: her brother, or the loss of a relationship that had begun to be such a healing, positive force in her life.

That was how fucked up she was.

Whitney supposed it might be strange to have found a way to process and even make her peace with the death she had already witnessed. There was no real reason that this should be different. Murder was murder: the end. But she wasn't sure it was that simple for her any more, and that wasn't strictly about the killing for its own sake.

Perhaps it was a mark of her own particular state of fucked-up-ness, yet she found herself leaning more toward the opinion that right and wrong weren't as black and white as she had once thought they were; that while she might not agree with the reasons, the death was a product of someone else's interpretation of those things and just because the ideology wasn't her own didn't automatically make it immoral.

If people were complicated, so too were the structures within which they chose to live. Her old beliefs were more a reflection of the state of the world as it had become than of natural rule; where globalization and the technology which aided it had shaped vastly large and different groups of people into strict, sharply defined molds called Law and Order. Jason reflected a time before that, where people left isolated from interaction for much of their time developed their own codes, their own uncrossable lines and impassible boundaries. It was neither right nor wrong, it simply was. That didn't lessen the impact of what she'd witnessed – she would feel it until the end of her days – but it had altered her perspective quite a bit.

She wasn't sure what made Clay different, after all, just because she hadn't felt as close to Mike as she once had didn't mean she had ever wished him dead. Maybe it was because she was feeling loss already, and that the thought of more on top of the very likely probability of their mother being gone was like twisting the knife already lodged in her gut. Maybe it was because it was Clay and she loved him, in spite of all his bullshit, when she had never really _loved_ Mike. Did it matter? Ultimately, no. It didn't matter at all.

But that was how it was. Her life had eclipsed reality: blocked it out, cast it in shadow around her. She had become the lead in some strange horror-thriller drama where it clashed with a morality tale.

And that was how it would be. Jason wouldn't come back until it was finished, and she would have to find a way to look at him again, to look him in the face and know what he'd done.

How was she supposed to do that? How was she going to stand being near him after? She wouldn't. She wouldn't be able to blame him, but neither would she be able to forgive him any more than she would be able to forgive herself – wrong and unfair as that might be. Whatever the nonsensical, irrational reasons, she had been able to withstand everything else. But this was going to destroy her.

Sucking in a breath, she hugged her knees tight to her chest, tucking her bound hands between them.

She didn't know what to do with herself. It wasn't like she could eat or sleep even if she wasn't both wired and nauseated. Nor could she focus on anything but the inevitable. It was the worst kind of restlessness compounded with the worst kind of not knowing. What else could she do but keep vigil and pray to a God she didn't really believe in?

When the floor above creaked, ever muscle in her body went tight, dread rising in the back of her throat and tasting of vomit because surely that inevitable had arrived.

But…wait.

She listened, straining her ears to hear in the oppressive quiet. Another sound: a muffled shuffling, the groan of old wood. Whitney's heart stuttered in her chest, and at first it was difficult to string together why the sound of an old house shifting seemed so odd. Until she remembered that she had never heard it do so before.

There it came again, the shuffling, faint, muted creaks upon the planks overhead. The scuff of shoe-soles, the complaint of weary floors, sounds that were so unusual that it had taken her generous seconds to recognize them. Because Jason never made noise when he was in the house before. She never heard him at all until he was at the trapdoor. And even if this had been him, the sounds themselves were wrong. If Jason were ever to make noise when he walked it would not be with scuffing shoes. His steps were nothing if not deliberate, always. He moved like a cat, not like this – hesitant and unsure. Which meant…

 _Someone else was in the house._

Hope flooded her veins as swiftly as if it fed to her through an IV, so pure and desperate that she felt dizzy with it.

" _Help me!_ "

It left her in a ragged burst of sound as she tipped back her head and screamed with everything she had.

Sitting up onto her knees, she slammed her palms into the metal grate again and again until it rattled, the sound jarring and brash and wonderful. When in a state of desperation, unusual things could be comforting, grounding, even – which was just one of the highly (and disturbingly) useful things she had learned during her time there.

"Help me, _please!_ "

There was a sharp crack like wood splintering. She jumped in spite of herself, instantly reminded of the way the bathroom floorboards had split beneath Mike as he was pulled down through them. An image severed immediately by the familiar whine of the trapdoor hinges. Giddy nerves fluttered at the base of her breastbone as she heard the two soft thumps of impact of two bodies jumped down into the tunnel.

It was a fair distance from the trapdoor to the main chamber; she had walked it often enough to know. It had just never seemed quite so long before now. Her rescuers were proceeding with quite appropriate levels of caution, but she still felt as though she were waiting on a bed of needles.

It occurred to her then that whoever this was might not be someone she wanted to meet. It was impressive how skewed her perceptions of danger had become that it had taken her until now to remember that not all people were inherently decent. Just because Jason hadn't turned out to be a psychopathic torturer did not mean whoever was coming now was any better than the monster she had originally taken him for. She couldn't regret drawing attention to herself, not when her brother's life was at stake, but she did feel a new wariness in the elevation of her pulse.

Reflexively she gathered up some of the extra length of chain, not entirely sure what she might hope to do with it, but deeming it better to be safe just in case. She had wondered before if she were at all capable of doing harm to another person, and she was only somewhat surprised to realize that yes. Yes, she was. If she had to wrap this chain around someone's neck and squeeze in order to stay alive, she would do it. If not for her own sake, then for Clay's. Without question.

She didn't have the time to think on it further; the footsteps were drawing ever closer, and she could see the beam of a flashlight cutting through the gloom.

It wasn't as dark as it might have been. She had her lantern, though its glow was waning drastically as the batteries slowly drained themselves of life, and the electric lights strung through the main tunnels courtesy of the excavation crew were on. Still the beam was a bright, narrow spear of solid white as it flitted back and forth in a manic path. Movement stirred in the thick shadows behind it, and Whitney gripped the chain more tightly as the figure of a man rounded the corner, only to stop sharply in his tracks as the beam of his flashlight swept in a quick arc to where she sat.

It was as if the breath had been stolen right out of her lungs – because she _knew_ that face, knew the eyes that widened as the color rushed from his face in a quick, pale rush. Eyes that seemed to change color with the weather just like Mom's, spiraling from blue to gray to green in the way of ocean water.

"Whitney?"

The sob ripped from her chest, from where it had been lodged for who knew how long, as Clay crossed the tunnel room in a rush – nearly tripping over his own long legs in his haste to get to her.

" _Clay_ ," she breathed, "oh, God, _Clay—_ "

He fell to his knees in front of her, dropping the flashlight and something else heavy and metallic to the ground with a clatter. Then his arms went around her, folding her into his body, warm and tall and a little lanky; and just like that she was small again, hugging her big brother, and all the poison and badness between them no longer mattered because he was there, and he was _alive._

Was it possible to be sick from relief? Well, possible or not that's where she was, stomach roiling from the rapid transition from devastating terror to its absence. Emotion surged, and she dissolved into a mess of dry sobs, repeating his name over and over again as if it were some kind of verbal tic that she couldn't quell. And though she had thought she had cried herself dry, two more tears managed to wring themselves free, searing and hot against the tight skin of her cheek.

"Are you ok?" Clay was asking as he drew back to look at her. His hands were too warm against her face as they framed it, the skin of her cheeks tight and sore from so much crying. He was thinner than she remembered. Not by a lot, but enough that she could tell. His cheekbones were a little sharper, the cleft in his chin a little deeper, faint shadows formed faint half-moons under his eyes. Grief and stress would do that to a person. She probably looked rather different too.

It was amazing in a truly awful way how much the trials and labors of life could consume nearly everything else. She had almost forgotten how much she loved him, with his too-pretty face and his stupid flippy hair, the tiny gap created by the very slightly crooked set of his lower front teeth. The resentment had poisoned her, made her blind to most of what lay beyond her own pain. A normal response, certainly, if unhelpful. But none of that seemed to important now. She had never in her life been happier to see anyone – to the point where it rendered her lightheaded. The relief was as potent as morphine. The gratitude she had to the universe for granting this one single, monumental boon so overpowering that she actually felt high for all of the five seconds it took her to breathe in the smell of him: laundry soap and sweat, and a faint hint of engine oil.

Five seconds. That was all she was allowed.

There was a girl hovering some feet behind her brother, looking on at the emotionally charged sibling reunion with mingled shock and wonder. She was quite pretty, in a delicate, pixie-cute way, and radiating a nervous fear behind an inherent sweetness, doe-eyes a little too wide. It was her presence that reminded Whitney where she was – where they _all_ were.

Fear swept through her with the force of an electrical surge, her spine stiffening and a sharp inhale driving straight down into the sinking pit of her stomach.

"You're ok," he was promising now, his gaze dropping to the chains at her wrists and she could almost feel his horror emanating like heat off his skin. "You're ok now…"

But Whitney was absolutely _not_ ok and wouldn't be again until he was far away from this place.

She clutched at his shoulder with her bound hands, fingers curling into the gray cotton of his sleeve. "You have to go. You have to get out of here, before—"

She didn't have to finish. Just by the way Clay's expression clouded with a potent mixture of fear and realization she could tell that he knew exactly to what she was referring, and panic rose to squeeze gentle fingers about her throat. Obviously he was all right, because here he was in front of her. But if he had been close enough to know...Jason, thorough and attentive hunter that he was, wouldn't be far behind. And if the two of them were still there when he came, neither of them would be all right for long.

"Go," she repeated shoving at her brother's shoulder. " _Now!_ "

Clay had always been expressive, almost so much so that he sometimes looked like he was faking, but he wasn't. His face simply betrayed every tiny miniscule flash of emotion he felt, and just now these were shock, dismay, uncertainty, and – clearest of all – defiance. His jaw set in an obstinate line, and she knew before he so much as opened his mouth what his answer would be.

"I'm not going anywhere without you," he said, with too much inflection to be flat, but the sentiment was there.

 _Damn_ him and his pigheaded...but then she was just as stubborn, just as headstrong in the worst of ways. He wasn't going to go. She hated him just as much as she loved him for it.

He was already looking back down, hands dropping to the cuffs at her wrists. Meanwhile, in her head, she was juggling curse words like an especially acrobatic sailor and trying to think through the terror threatening to drown her because they _had no time_. None.

She didn't have the luxury of explaining to Clay why he needed to ditch her, and even if she could have made him listen there was no way he would believe that she'd be safe in his absence – not after he'd seen this. He wasn't capable of seeing that she wasn't physically wrecked, that she was fed and that there was plenty of water nearby, and that she wasn't sitting in her own filth. All he could see was his little sister chained up in the dark in a creepy underground lair and he wasn't going to leave her there. And she couldn't exactly pretend she didn't understand that. If he wouldn't go without her, then she had to get free.

Clay was pulling at the cuffs, trying to see if he could separate them from the chain attached to the wall.

"Can you break them?" she pressed, feeling time closing in around her like a great, toothy creature in the dark and unwilling to wait for him to run through all the things she had already tried.

To his credit, he didn't question or argue with her, just reached for the things he'd dropped, hand gripping the handle of what she could now make out to be a pickax. Surely _that_ could break her loose.

"Come on, you guys, we've got to get out of here," the girl hissed to them from where she stood lookout by the entrance to the room, and Whitney couldn't help but silently agree with her.

Turning, she braced her closed fists atop the crate and pulled her wrists as far apart as she could. Clay's arm was raised, poised to bring it and the tool he carried down on the chain, but he hesitated, a furrow of stress creasing his brow.

"Do it," Whitney demanded, shaking her hands so the chain rattled pointedly. "Hurry."

"I don't want to hit you—"

"Just fucking _do it!_ "

But he didn't.

Before she could chuck further obscenities at him, however, he gripped her left wrist and lowered the pickax, wedging the narrower, sharper end into the small loop of metal where the thinner chain which connected the two cuffs attached at the base. She understood immediately what he was trying to do, and it was such a smart idea – so much smarter than just banging away at the place where the two different chains attached and _hoping_ the thing broke. Thank goodness Clay could think under pressure as she clearly could not. She braced, gripping the side of the crate while Clay twisted the pickax and heaved with what proved to be just the right combination of leverage and force. Not only did the chain come free, but the manacle itself split at the seam, the integrity of the old metal compromised beyond its ability to hold. The metal coil clattered to the wood slats beneath, revealing her wrist, still wrapped with gauze that had been clean as of that morning.

Relieved that his idea had worked, Clay switched to the other wrist, wedging metal point into metal loop. Again Whitney gripped the crate, using her other hand to hold the now dangling chain as the hair at the nape of her neck prickled as if she had felt the brush of someone's breath there. The muscles in her shoulders and back tightened automatically, her head jerking up like that of a prey animal scenting danger.

She hadn't heard the whine of the trapdoor hinges a second time, indicating they must have left it open, but she didn't need it to know he was there. She heard the impact, faint as it was – absorbed by bent knees and the practiced precision of years. Felt it radiate along her bones as surely as she recognized the soft sound.

"Oh god…" she breathed.

What time they'd had was up.

"You guys," the girl whispered frantically, the beam of her own flashlight flicking toward the way they'd come. "I heard something—we have to go!"

With a grunt of exertion, Clay heaved at the pickax. The manacle split with a metallic crack that jangled her nerves the way a cat might have picked up a mouse and shaken it. She was wound so tightly in her nervous terror that she cast the broken bits of metal away from her like a snake as she lurched to her feet, ignoring Clay's attempt to help her as she lurched to her feet and shoved him back toward the rear of the tunnel.

She didn't know the way. She didn't even know what lay beyond this room let alone which of the numerous branches off the main tunnel might lead to safety, if there even was one. For all she knew the mining tunnels were a maze, or else led nowhere but deeper into the earth. It was why she didn't argue when Clay picked one of the three options and ushered her and the brown-haired girl along it. She just went, following as the other girl set off at a run all the while her heart pounded like a fist trying to beat its way out through her bones.

They couldn't move as quickly as she would have liked. For all that they were relatively spacious and sturdily fortified by the wooden beams which formed the skeleton of their structure, the tunnels were riddled with hazards; obstacles in the form of rocks and random piles of junk and stuff left either to store or else to rot with time. They were forced to pick their way carefully between stints of speed, and the stress of this alone was enough to knit burning stitches into Whitney's sides for all that the exertion wasn't great. She could hear Clay's repeated mutters of "go, go, go" behind her, feel his hand at her back or shoulder every so often as though reassuring both her and himself that they were both still there.

She could almost feel Jason bearing down on them in the heavy shadows, once again the titan of blood and metal, the vengeful death god, and even if that no longer scared her quite the way it once had the idea caused the world narrowed down to dirt and electric light to swim wildly about her. With every stride she took the locket bounced against her breastbone, each tap striking sparks of guilt and some other, emotion she couldn't name.

She shouldn't have taken it. It wasn't hers after all, she should have left it behind...

They followed the bend of the passageway as it curved to the right and came to a stop as their path ended in a wall of packed earth and rock.

Whitney felt her stomach sink, pressing flat against her pelvic floor.

"What are we gonna do?" the girl whimpered, and Whitney had never agreed with a sentiment more.

Even if they could backtrack they would only be wasting yet more time when every too-quick breath stood for a second they couldn't afford to spend. Clay had begun frantically searching the space around them, stretching up on his toes to smack at a metal grate set into the tunnel ceiling, swearing when it barely so much as rattled. Whitney could only turn, glancing back the way they'd come and wondering how long they had before Jason ran them down.

Did she have any chance of saving them – her brother, the girl with him? She didn't know the girl but she already felt protective of her, would have even if she hadn't been with Clay because she was just a girl, as Whitney had been once, and she didn't deserve to die just because she had happened upon the wrong place to be. What if she shielded them? What if she put her own body between him and them and simply refused to move? Silly question: as if she could actually bar his way. All he'd have to do was move her. He could just pick her up, physically remove her from the way as she screamed and kicked and while she didn't think he would particularly enjoy causing her distress, it wouldn't stop him.

From behind her Clay emitted a noise of discovery, and she turned back in time to watch him lift a piece of what looked like broken wooden fencing away from where it had rested against the tunnel wall. He tossed it aside with a scrape of old nails to reveal a narrow opening.

A tiny flutter of relief eased the crushing weight of her dread. The opening led into an adjoining branch of the tunnel system, but lit and widened out just like its parent, which meant that maybe not all way lost quite yet.

Clay bent at the waist to glance inside, and upon deeming it safe, called over a shoulder: "We can get through here—follow me."

He clambered through, his long, tall frame awkward as he maneuvered in such a narrow space. Once inside he flung an arm back out, reaching for them.

"Come on," he urged, beckoning for her to take his hand.

Automatically Whitney turned to usher the brown-haired girl in after him. Of the three of them, she was the least at risk, after all. Meeting the girl's wide, warm eyes she gestured to the tunnel mouth.

"Go."

The girl gave a firm shake of her head. "You first," she insisted, and there was something stubborn about the set of her jaw that Whitney understood perfectly.

They were each trying to protect each other, in their own ways. This girl had been led to believe Whitney had spent the past weeks as a prisoner, being terrorized and tormented in who knew what ways, and regardless of whether she was right or not something in Whitney responded to the insistent display of protectiveness from this person who didn't know her from Eve. It was a thing done in very real kindness, and her own stubbornness wavered – torn between a fierce need to assert her own knowledge and desire to protect this unexpected sister in the face of horror and the reprieve it was to be taken care of this way. Ultimately it was the press of time that made her decision for her. Rather than argue she relented, moving to take Clay's outstretched hand.

Bending, she climbed into the open mouth, knees kicking up a fine powder of loose dirt, her elbow scraping a piece of rock as she let him haul her through to the second tunnel.

As soon as she had the room to stand she did, wrenching her body around to face the opening. The brown-haired girl was already climbing through, flashlight still clutched in one hand as she struggled slightly, knees catching at the uneven surface beneath them.

Clay reached for her, hands closing about her wrists to help pull her through. Not half a second later there was a bright flash of metal in the dark and a noise like nothing else on the face of the earth.

The sound a human body made when impaled upon a blade was a peculiarly awful thing. It wasn't really a product of the body itself, or of the blade, but rather the force which drove one through the other – wet and thick and almost vacuumous, as if from air being sucked into places it wasn't supposed to be. And that was only the flesh. Add to it the oddly meaty crack of breaking bone and you had pure nightmare fuel to last a lifetime. It was this precise sound Whitney heard first, the instant before she saw the blade punch clean through the brown haired girl's chest.

She screamed, and it seemed a thing ripped from her, shrill and hard and scraping the inside of her throat.

The girl jerked reflexively, her eyes widening almost imperceptibly, lips parting as if in something as mild as surprise. Then she looked down, peering at the pointed end of the machete that protruded from where it had split the bones, blood slick and dark across the mirror surface.

" _Fuck,_ Jenna!" Clay yelled. He had jerked back instinctively from the blade but he reached again for her. "Jenna— _Jenna,_ no!"

Their hands brushed, fingertips frantically grasping and failing to take hold, and in that small, brief and fading moment something new and now tragic could be seen. The girl was gasping, working without success to breathe around the metal lodged in her chest. Jenna. Her name was – had been – Jenna, and it seemed so wrong to only learn it now that she was dying, doe eyes rolling back into her skull as her body quickly drained of everything that made her more than just a shell.

Later, Whitney knew, she would mourn this death. She would mourn the new friend forged in trauma; mourn the kindness that had gotten Jenna killed. Because if only she had insisted it might have been Whitney in her place, and in that place to buy just a little more time even if it had cost her life. But now could not be later. Now was the time for vigilance, for action. The sorrow would have to wait.

Launching herself at her brother she seized him about the torso, fumbling for purchase at his arm, his sleeve, anything. She dug her heels into the dirt, throwing all of her weight into the effort as she heaved, and it was a sign of either the sheer strength of her fear or the power of Clay's sense of loss that she was able to drag him a few steps away from the opening just as the machete was yanked free of Jenna's slumping form. Her body collapsed, seeming almost to fold in on itself as it was wrenched forcefully from the tunnel mouth – revealing the now all too familiar mask, white as scored bone in the dark.

" Oh god, _Clay,_ " Whitney cried, her voice breaking on the name as she pleaded around the taste of bile and the pulse throbbing like a death knell in her brain. Her gaze was fixed to the ghostly oval, to the eyes too shadowed even to glimmer that she knew must be black and burning – to the massive hand reaching in, long, broad fingers hooking about the lip of the opening.

Clay twisted in her grasp, his pain and shock at the loss of Jenna rapidly overridden by the need to protect his sister. She felt him plant a hand against her side to press her backward and away. "Fuck—go," he hissed, the words clipped and urgent. " _Go!_ "

As quick as the muscles in her legs and back were to resume the precarious flight, it was unexpectedly difficult to tear her eyes away, for reasons she wasn't sure she knew how to reconcile. But she did. She gripped her brother's sweat-lined hand in her own, and then she ran as she had not run in weeks; fleeing from the very same danger she had fled from before. And yet it wasn't the same at all.

Not by a long shot.

~/~

With every step Jason's apprehension increased, whining at an ever higher pitch inside his skull.

He was catching up; of that much he was sure. Whoever he followed, even without light they weren't difficult to track. For one thing, the reek of fear and chemicals only seemed stronger now as the night deepened, and judging by the swath of disturbed foliage and cracked branches they left in their wake, the combination of fear and of traversing strange terrain was slowing them down. Under any other circumstances this would be cause for satisfaction, not trepidation. And perhaps if the trail he followed wasn't leading headlong for the house he might have relegated this circumstance among all the rest. By the time it led him through the campground the apprehension had swelled to become full-on worry, loud and buzzing in his head like a swarm of aggravated bees.

The dirt path that led to what was technically the back of the house was edged by a length of crumpled chicken-wire fencing originally erected in the hope of keeping deer out of the rose bushes that had been his mother's prized possessions. The roses had long since swallowed the porch in front with the aid of the other plants, curling around the eaves and making any attempt to circumnavigate the house a treacherous one.

It had been a long time since he had looked at the house of his childhood with anything outside of the realm of the usual range of emotions: sadness, emptiness, solitude, all worn and aged to a mild sepia tint after so many years. Now, as he stared at the screen door set crooked on its hinges – not how he'd left it – dread unlike anything he remembered knowing before flooded him. Rapidly he shoved the emotion away, cramming it into the back-most corners of his mind, unwilling to allow emotion to best him for a single moment more.

He exercised all the knowledge he had of the old house's weak points as he entered, utilizing every ounce of stealth he had developed as he picked his way up the steps and across the threshold into the kitchen, eyes scanning the thick shadows inside. They had come inside at the very least. He could smell them, the stench of sweat gone sour with the fear pumping as thickly as the blood in their veins – so strong that he could almost taste it in the back of his mouth. Still, it was possible his concern was misplaced. It was possible they had come and gone, they'd had enough time for that; time enough to dart back outside, cross the broken spine of fencing and run back into the trees.

Even as he invented the scenario he knew it to be fiction, yet the ferocity with which he needed it to be real was almost enough to convince him otherwise for the seconds it took him to clear the kitchen and part of the hall. Before he passed the threshold into the living room and his eyes dropped to the floor, to the light emanating from below.

The trapdoor was open.

The house had always been a sensitive area. Violation of this above all places inside the boundaries of his territory he viewed as something of a personal insult. The last time someone had barged in, he had torn one of them open with his bare hands, and it had been as awful as it had been satisfying. But it had been just that – and insult. Not a _threat._ Jason was not accustomed to feeling threatened. Most things that were normally considered threats to other people were mere inconveniences to him. The risk of someone escaping lay more in the potential of drawing yet more people he would then have to dispatch than anything else, when he would much rather have been left alone. But he felt threatened now. The last time someone had barged in, there had been nothing but memory to protect. That was not the case anymore.

Something at once ferocious and fragile roiled in the spaces where his lungs were supposed to be, and once again, he forced the emotion to the background, having neither the time nor the freedom to fully feel it. Bracing a hand against the floor he dropped into the crawlspace, the wound in his left leg searing in protest as his knees bent to absorb the noise of his landing.

Slowly he made his way down the first few narrow feet of the tunnel, listening intently, fingertips skimming the pommel of the machete at his side. A sound reached him; the groan of metal put under heavy strain, the snap of it giving way bouncing off the dirt walls and down to him. The faint strains of voices were too warped by the texture of earthen walls to make out, but the kinetic urgency behind them was clear.

He increased his pace, his heart hammering relentlessly like an animal frantic to escape a trap and his caution ebbing with every inch of ground he covered. He wasn't sure what to expect, and the sheer vastness of the possibilities was causing the thread of worry to thicken in place around his throat, squeezing like a noose more tightly with every step. His fingers curled around the worn leather wrapping the hilt beneath his hand, the grip on it almost like a baring of claws or fangs for all that he didn't draw it.

He would not normally be so cautious – not with vermin in his own home. The thing was, while he might no longer be capable of death, or even of a severe maiming, his was not the only flesh at stake. That said, it was full-on stupidity of the highest order not to check the room before he entered it. He knew there were two of them, knew there were enough nooks laid thick with shadow to make ambush easy – to say nothing of the potential weapons. But even knowing all this there was nothing that could keep him from striding straight into the cavernous room, or his eyes from immediately dropping to Whitney's corner.

The bed was empty but for the manacles which lay in a broken shambles. Broken glass littered the space around the crate and several books had tipped from the surface to the ground, pages splayed beneath their parted covers. Dirt had been kicked up onto the end of the mattress as though left in the wake of a struggle. But what made his stomach drop like a stone in free-fall was none of these things, but rather that she was gone.

For the space of a single terrible second, the world ceased to turn.

He hadn't allowed himself to feel it before, afraid of what his own response might be, but now everything he had forced into submission in order to reassert supremacy over himself came rushing through like water breaking through a dam. The tumult couldn't be picked apart into individual, definable pieces. It was just upheaval: a rising, flooding, consuming mass of it.

His hands fell limp at his sides. He couldn't breathe, couldn't think, could only stare at the empty space that had ceased to be anything other than hers and feel his heart squeeze within the fist that seemed to have reached inside and gripped it. Anguish laced the dread now realized, helpless loss, and a terror beyond what he had thought possible to produce rose, filling his chest, his throat, his mouth, slick and foul, and tasting of silt and pond scum.

He completely forgot her earlier pleas for freedom. It did not occur to him that she might very well have met these strangers as saviors of a sort, suited to granting her the release that he had refused, nor that he might choose to interpret it as the will of fate, to let go of any remaining sense of responsibility to her. He was too raw, still bleeding emotions alien and powerful that he didn't know how to manage. The sight of the empty corner, the broken cuffs, unhinged something inside him. It took whatever scraps were left of the rational human man he might once have been and buried them deep, replacing them with a part of himself so deeply entrenched in things he didn't fully understand, primal and beastly. That saw only that not only had the strangers trespassed on his land and violated his sanctuary, but they had also stolen something from him. And the control he had clung to – that he held so vitally dear – gave way as the storm-tossed sea of emotion crested and swallowed him whole.

The machete was unsheathed and in his hand before he was consciously aware of having once again reached for it, his head snapping to forward and his body surging into motion. The scuffed ruts in the dirt were clue enough to tell him which path they'd taken, but he hardly seemed to need it. As had happened only the once before it felt as though he were being drawn forward by something almost magnetic, as though he were being directed by a singular focus so sharp that his body no longer felt like his own. It had become a force, driven to the resolution of a single goal.

The sheer strength of that goal, the need behind it, might have alarmed him if he had the attention to spare for it. But he had no thought to question it, no thought to analyze the why or what it changed. In the moment, none of that mattered. The only thing that mattered was getting to her because she...she was his.

The thought shocked him, deep down where he was still able to feel such a thing. But the instant it came to him he knew it was the culmination of numerous little acts and decisions he had made over weeks. Why it only now seemed solidified he had no idea, but he knew it to be true. In fact, it was almost a relief to know it. Or it would have been were it not for the powerful surge of certainty.

He might have let them go before, let them scuttle back to their dirty, noisy towns with their miserable lives if they had left well enough alone. But it was much too late for that now. She was his _-_ and these foul, insipid human vermin _would not_ take her from him.

This time he welcomed the rage, enveloped himself within the burning heat or it and allowed it to fuel him as he followed at a headlong run. It had been a long time since he had been down this particular path, but he still knew it, the turns and obstacles, the subtle rise roughly halfway down that threatened to turn an unwary ankle. He recalled it ended abruptly, but also that he had fashioned an escape route leading from it as he had to all of the other branches. It was one of the older and more dangerous ones, and not well concealed, if he remembered right, which did nothing to improve his temper as he charged along the route. If he could catch them before they found it...

Which of course he didn't. By the time he rounded the last shallow bend two of them had already made it through the opening, the last one just beginning to crawl inside.

He experienced the briefest spark of hope at the realization that the lower half of the body still dangling halfway out of the new tunnel belonged to a girl, only for it to be instantly smashed. Even without seeing the girl's face he knew she wasn't Whitney. It wasn't the different clothes, or even the scent of her once he got near enough to catch it. It was the shortness of her legs, the too-round shape of her backside. He supposed it should have made him uncomfortable to realize that he had paid enough attention to Whitney's body to be able to tell so quickly and beyond doubt, but in the moment he didn't had the time for shame or discomfort, or anything beyond the desperate, all-devouring fury. This girl was in the way. Standing between him and Whitney – _his_ Whitney.

The fact that the girl was turned away and in a highly vulnerable position didn't give him pause. Jason had no misgivings where it concerned administering a blow when a victim's back was turned. For him there was nothing like honor tied to killing, just as he did not view it as sport. He didn't care whether his prey saw him coming or not – in fact he would rather they didn't if it meant keeping the encounter quick and as clean as possible. Such as now.

The machete slipped through ribs as though he were cutting through clay as he thrust the blade forward, straight through unprotected back. He could feel the sharp jerk of her pain, or realization, reverberate all the way up to his elbow, and while it was far from pleasant, he didn't remain focused on it for long.

Over the course of those first few days he had become increasingly familiar with the precise pitch and tone of Whitney's scream to the point where it had turned from a single drop amidst a void of thousands to a singularity, to the point where he could have picked it out of a chorus of voices. So when he heard it then, that scream he had not heard in weeks – shrill and high with horror – he felt it all the way down to the marrow of his bones. Some primal, hitherto untapped part of his brain heard the very particular vein of utter dread in her voice and burned with a savage need to track down whatever had put it there and tear it limb from limb.

Before this night, he'd thought he knew anger, thought it as familiar as the shade of trees, as cool earth. And perhaps it had been. But the anger of before had been the lick of flame at the end of a match, a quick, bright flare which inevitably consumed its source and burnt itself to smoke. Even the anger of moments ago, hot and searing, was a mild, meek thing compared to the black, blazing rage that rippled like oil-fire through him now. He would tear the entire tunnel down around himself to get to her if he had to. To get her back, to get her _safe._

With a brutal yank he slid the machete free. He grabbed a fist full of the girl's sweater, dragging her body back and out of the tunnel mouth until she spilled to the ground in a tangled heap of limbs, the gashes in her back and chest peeling open like splitting seams.

Crouching, he peered through the opening in time to see the tall young man he remembered from earlier that night by the burnt totem poles shuffling hurriedly back. And just behind him, Jason could just see Whitney's face, stark and pale in the yellow glare of the lights.

He reached without thinking, empty palm shaping to the rough curve of the packed wall as the young man cursed, and Jason's vision narrowed, centering on the places where the man's fingers dug into the flesh of her forearm, her waist – grabbing her, shoving her forcefully back and down along the branching pathway.

A silent growl of frustration rumbled at the back of his throat. They were too far away to reach now, and even if he followed there were variables outside of his control. For one thing, it was what the man would expect, and in keeping Whitney so close he had all but eradicated any leverage Jason might have had. Weapons, size, power, all meant nothing when his prey possessed a shield with a beating heart.

He could not guarantee her safety, and to risk it consciously was something he would not do. Following would do nothing but put him right where he was expected to be. And if he could not follow…

Swiftly he rose, bypassing the fresh corpse and backtracking all the way to the main chamber. He took another of the tunnel branches heading in a parallel direction, the use of which would allow him to circle around them and reach the point where the other tunnel let out before they did, and hopefully catch them by surprise.

~/~

"Look! I think this might be a way out."

Whitney's hands closed around the sides of the rough wooden ladder, craning her head back to peer up at the jagged hole in the tunnel ceiling it led to. It was so much darker up there than in the tunnels, without the lights to illuminate what lay beyond.

Clay's breath brushed her hair as he came up behind her to look. It came as hard in his throat as her own did, a symptom of the breakneck pace they had used to get there and the adrenaline coursing thick as syrup in their blood. Fortunately there had been no detritus in the second branch of tunnels and hardly any obstacle aside from the odd rough patch in the dirt, but the only reason neither of them had turned an ankle or twisted a knee was because of pure, stupid luck.

"Ok," Clay said, "let's see where it goes."

She could tell he was still in shock over Jenna's death, but he was managing it far better than she had during her first night there. Somehow she still had a lock on her feelings about the matter, mostly due to the fact that for all that it appeared Jason was no longer following right on their heels she felt no safer than she had.

There was no way he had just let them go. She had never been more certain about anything in her entire life. He wouldn't have refused her before onto to do so now, when she was accompanied by a stranger who very much represented a threat on top of having committed the offense of setting foot on his land. No, he wasn't letting them go.

So, then…where was he?

Setting her foot to one of the lower rungs she hefted herself upward. The leather cord that had been used to lash the wood together creaked in complaint under the strain of so much weight after all the years of disuse, but it held together as they climbed. A couple of old boards had been laid over the hole from the outside, which were easily knocked aside when pushed.

As she levered herself out, she experienced a moment of vertigo. Blinking rapidly to adjust her eyes to the new, far dimmer cast of light she took in the new surroundings with some confusion until the gears in her brain could click slowly into place and she realized they were in a broken down school bus.

The vehicle had been overturned so that it lay on its side like a beached whale, creating the illusion that the world had tilted sideways and gravity right along with it. Tree limbs and roots had forced their way through broken glass and rusted gaps in metal seams to curl gnarled and knotted around cracked vinyl seats, making the interior look like a remnant of some civilization long since reclaimed by nature.

Metal clanged as Clay climbed out beside her, head swiveling as he stood to take in the rows of seats to their right, the line of windows above them before gesturing for her to head for the front of the bus.

She made her way through a veil of dry, twig-thin branches, her steps muffled by the carpet of dried leaves and fir needles that littered what had become the floor. They were lucky it had fallen to rest upon the driver's side, leaving the door facing up toward the sky rather than pressed into the ground. Chances were they could have managed to wrestle one of the windows open, or else break the already plenty cracked glass, but it would be much faster – and safer – to use the door if they could. It was stuck, of course, the gears clogged with dirt and grime, but after banging at the hinged with a closed fist Clay managed to bend the folding panels into the open position.

He went up first, and even with his advantage of height and longer legs he had to jump to grab hold of the outer edge of the door's frame, or even to use the sideways steps. Metal clanged against his knees as he climbed out and turned back for her.

"Give me your hand!" he called, setting one of his feet back on the topmost step as he reached for her.

She grabbed hold of a nearby root, using it as leverage in order to take her brother's hand. His grim-streaked fingers closed tight about her wrist, and she gripped the side of the nearest seat with her other to help hoist herself out. She had just managed to reach the bottommost step when she saw it – the ghostly white oval of the mask emerging from the dark over his shoulder and she screeched reflexively.

Jason's great hands came down on Clay's shoulders, gripping him by the back of his jacket and she felt the power of it in Clay's startled gasp, the force with which Clay's hand was ripped from hers. He hauled her brother away as though he were lifting a chair, something with mass and weight that he felt, but which didn't slow him, and she could see no more, could only hear her brother yelling for her to run as if there was anywhere to go – as if there was any way she could.

"Clay—" she screamed, lightning crackling in her fear. " _Clay!_ "

Sounds of scraping and scuffling echoed along the metal walls, sounds of struggle. She twisted, craning her head back, trying to see through glass frosted halfway opaque by dirt as her heart shuddered in terror and hopelessness and sharp, bitter fury.

Her palms struck what had once been the roof in a burst of anguished temper. "Stop it!" she yelled, and banged again, this time with a fist that ached fiercely with the ferocity with which she struck the still very solid metal. Glass shattered behind her. She whipped around in time to see Clay's head come through one of the now broken windows, shards of it raining down amongst the fir needles. He was limp, unmoving, either stunned or worse and Whitney couldn't tell if she was going to pass out or vomit.

One of Jason's hands fisted in Clay's dark hair, lifting his head as he meant to slam it into the window frame.

"No— _stop it!_ "

The grip at the back of Clay's head loosened. As she watched, the white shape of the mask paused, angled toward her to peer owlishly down through the streaked glass of the adjoining windowpane. Clay shifted, emitting a soft, winded sound and the clamp about her heart eased somewhat. He was alive, thank god. At least until…

Jason straightened. Through the glass she saw him stand, felt the shudder and groan of the bus as he moved away from where her brother lay.

Confusion swirled inside her momentary relief. Why hadn't Jason killed him? He had to have known Clay was still alive, killing was what he did and he was very good at it. She didn't have it in her to believe that he could have missed that his newest victim-to-be had still been moving, still _breathing_. He had been about to smash Clay's brains in, but then he hadn't. Why? Surely not because she'd yelled at him to stop.

No, that wasn't it. It didn't matter anyway. What mattered was getting Clay on his feet and away from here.

She backed away from the door, turning in a haphazard circle and raking her brain for what to do. She had to incapacitate Jason, at least long enough to buy them some time. Although just how exactly she was supposed to incapacitate a man the size of a bear she had no freaking clue.

Jason's boots met the metal of the steps and she swore under her breath, twisting madly as her eyes darted across the row of seats. The bus had been built with them lowered for the sake of the driver's visibility; meaning that to sit, one would have had to step down from the shallow lip of the raised aisle. Grasping the metal bars on which they were bolted she heaved herself up, nestling her feet onto the narrow perch created by overturned step, hiding herself within the niche of the seat.

She heard each step he took down into the belly of the bus. She shouldn't have, he had no reason to be obvious when he knew full well she was more than aware of his presence. And yet that he did it tugged at something inside her.

Her mind raced, knowing she had only moments to decide what to do and grasping at nothing but air. All she seemed to be able to conjure was the vision of how he had stopped mid-killing blow, how he had turned his face to her and seemed to reorder his priorities away from the death that had seemed to be the alter at which he had been raised to worship. Which was untrue and unhelpful, but she simply couldn't shake the feeling that there was something important she wasn't seeing.

The metal creaked gently as he walked, making his way down the side of the bus, growing ever closer. He took his time about it, which felt like a special kind of torture though it wasn't meant to be.

When he finally came within view she had already been holding her breath, and what had begun as a method of regaining some measure of calm became the necessity for silence. His head was turned down to the floor, studying the hole through which they had climbed up from the tunnels as though trying to discern if she'd gone back down.

He stepped to the side then, shoulders angling to face her straight on, yet with the mask limiting his periphery he didn't see her until he fully lifted his head.

His eyes met hers, and there was _relief_ in them. Relief and surprise and something else she didn't recognize but that reminded her of the unburdening she felt upon coming home after a difficult day. His head tilted ever so slightly, eyes creasing curiously as if to ask what she was doing perched up there, and the sight of that familiar movement seized her by the heart and cruelly twisted.

Right before she drew up her knees and kicked him straight in the chest.

He staggered backward, shoulders striking the metal roof, and she knew it was nearly all out of shock than any strength of hers. She had counted on it, after all – counted on his trust, his affection. Counted on it only to use it against him.

He wouldn't understand….and it wasn't his fault. None of it was. He didn't know they were related, or even that they knew each other. He must have thought she'd been taken away against her will, maybe that she had been hurt or scared, hence the use of sound to alert her to where he was. He had been coming to check on her, to make sure she was all right – and yes, he _had_ set the importance of this above killing Clay – not realizing that she had been actively working against his efforts all night.

Well, he would know it now.

She couldn't have planned it better. His foot caught the edge of the tunnel opening and gravity did the rest of the work to drag him down. She could almost feel the impact of his ribs meeting the rough transition between earth and metal as he caught himself with both arms, and would have sworn she tasted blood in her mouth.

She tripped as she jumped back down from the seat, her knees and hip smacking the bus's metal frame with a hollow bang she felt all the way up to the spaces between her teeth. Whether it was the world's form of punishment, or her own body's way of declaring its shock and rebellion against what she'd just done, it didn't really matter. A dry sob forced its way from her throat as she struggled to her feet and stumbled for the door.

"Whitney!"

Clay's voice, muffled by metal and glass. He was up again, conscious and calling for her.

Her hands were shaking as she gripped the bar of the front most seat, the action putting the layers of gauze wrapped about her wrists directly in her line of sight. Sadness and regret throbbed in her belly like hunger at the sight of them: the bandaging so carefully administered to keep her skin from chafing, and she had to fight the urge to look back. What was done was done, and it would do her no good to dwell. Jason's patience was married to a formidable relentlessness, and she knew what little harm – if any – she had done to him wouldn't delay him long. She had her own priorities to see to, and right now they couldn't be him. That didn't stop her from despising herself.

Bracing her foot against the wheel well she leapt, just managing to grab the frame of the door with her fingertips. With a grunt she pulled, the muscles in her arms pulling far past the point of comfort. The sky had opened up, unleashing a downpour that held the bite of fall in the stinging chill as it hit the skin of her upturned face. Clay's face came into view – bloodied at the forehead, but otherwise whole – his hands tucking beneath her arms to help her as she struggled out onto the side of the bus.

The water had already formed a thin, slippery film across the surface of the earth that broke and slid beneath their feet as they dropped to the ground, inhibiting their ability to run in spite of Clay's hoarse urging for them to hurry.

"This way," he called, leading the way toward the silhouette of the barn up ahead, looming over them from the dark like the shadow of fate. And for all the misery she was doing her best to choke down like bile, Whitney followed.

* * *

 **NOTES:**

Quick acknowledgement that last chapter was chapter 13 and that's kind of perfect.

I almost didn't finish this this weekend due to the fact that some of the work I'd done on the last scene abruptly and mysteriously vanished even with my crazy email's constant auto-save function turned on and having manually saved at least twice because I've lost work before and now I'm a manic repeat-saver. (Just saved right now.) I didn't lose a whole lot, maybe five paragraphs, but I was really goddamn frustrated and the timing was really bad so I had to wait to try and feverishly jot down what I remembered having written before driving home from work. It was unpleasant. (And saved again. This is what I do. Constantly. I'll stop referring to it now.) It's really thanks to the comment I got this morning from "Lila" that softened my frustration and encouraged me to knuckle down and work on it again, and I'm really glad I did. Because…

Finally we get some SWEET EMOTIONAL FAMILY REUNION FEELS. I changed the way they got her out of the handcuffs, because really the idea of just banging at them and possibly cutting Whitney's fucking hand off seems like a great idea. And, ok, no I don't actually know if cracking them open like that is possible, but it might be. It still seems less dangerous and worth trying to me.

Also: if Jason is as hell bent on getting Whitney back, as he clearly is, he's not going to just plod cautiously. He's going to charge in there and fuck your shit up. And you can't tell me he doesn't hear all that banging on the chains. Plus, I have a BIG issue with the fact that when she's hiding in the bus and he KNOWS it's just her inside, WHY does he pull the machete? Unless he actually means to hurt her – which I don't believe, because of his reaction to finding her (that tiny "what'cha doing?" head tilt though) – or unless he thinks she's a threat…which I also doubt, at least in a way that would require a big fucking sharp thing. Nope. REJECTED.

Once again the problem with this movie's sense of distance and time rears its head. Most of the time when watching I can mentally suspend my skepticism and go with it, but it's different when writing. I actually had to sketch out a super rough and shitty map to try and orient myself to where everything in this movie world was in relation to everything else…and I still kind of don't have it figured out. Why? Because it was eating up too much time to make the crappy map – time I wanted to be spending writing. So there are more than likely directional and time-taking inconsistencies in this story for which I apologize…but at this point I honestly do not care enough to fix them. :/ There are other things I would rather focus on, like relationships and the psycho-emotional states of my leads. You know. The reasons why we're all really here.

Speaking of: this was a challenging chapter in very specific ways, because there's so much conflict in Whitney right now, and she's really only consciously aware of some of it. I tend to want to show and tell and give EVERYTHING, and curbing that impulse was really difficult with her here.

Real talk – Jenna's death makes me sad. She's genuinely nice, and she follows all the slasher don't-do rules. But I also really vehemently don't like that she never really tells Trent to fuck off with his attitude, plus she really doesn't seem really surprised or bothered that he's banging Bree…? I don't know. I think what makes me saddest is that she and Clay could've got together and she could learn some self-respect from a guy who respects her. I know I could have changed it, and I really did seriously start trying to figure out how, but in the end I'm trying to actively change as little as possible, and her death actually adds to something I'm exploring. So I kept it. I'm sorry, Jenna. You deserved better. L

Finally: thank you all so much for still being here, even though I'm not the fastest to update. All your comments and kudos and follows make this adventure a much more fun one. You guys are awesome.

Until next time!


	15. Devil's Backbone

**Chapter 15  
** Devil's Backbone

~/13/~

The barn proved to be farther away than it had appeared, requiring them to climb a shallow slope that felt like scaling a cliff-face in rain-slick dirt and wade their way through what seemed like a few leagues worth of trees. Whether it was the dark or the rain or the sheer necessity, or all of it combined, the night itself seemed to have warped the distance as it appeared to their eyes. Whitney was soaked to the skin by the time they reached it, shoes and jean hems cakes with mud, and while Clay fared a bit better in his jacket his hair stuck to his cheeks and neck in wet tendrils.

The wide front doors had been left open, which seemed odd, especially when nothing moving or seemingly alive appeared to be inside. It was the kind of barn used for storage and a work space, not for livestock. And for all that there was a light on overhead, the place had an air of having been left untouched for some time.

First there was the light itself, clinging to the ceiling between first and second floors and offering the dimming, souring luminescence of an old bulb. Then there was the dust, a thin layer of the ultra-fine, almost filmy dust produced when shredding wood products, too fine even to be called sawdust. The surfaces were laden with it, with so few patches cleared off that it almost might have been regular dust. There were the clear signs of projects started and left half-finished: an open oilcan, a wheelbarrow of wood-scraps, with a few pieces left on the floor as though dropped mid-work. A magazine had been left open on a wooden spool off in a far corner below the open-slat stairwell, as though someone had set it down mid-perusal only moments ago.

Then there was the main feature of the barn's interior: the wood chipper. An evil-looking specimen from the bestiary of machinery that was likely far more dangerous than its worth and that probably violated every code that existed for such a tool.

The entire building gave Whitney the creeps, but not at all in the way Jason's house once had. Something other than ghosts haunted this place – although it was entirely possible she was simply suffering from a stress-induced overactive imagination.

She had only followed Clay inside out of the assumption that he knew something she didn't; that he was retracing the path he had made in finding her back out to a road, a vehicle, something. But he was scanning the walls, the equipment packed inside as he made his way forward, and not in the way of someone looking for a specific endpoint.

She was starting to feel the internal pressure of time ticking away again. It was beginning to collude with the guilt coating the back of her mouth, the weird strains of sadness that were twining amidst the fear that had remained at an every fluctuating high for she didn't know how many hours. The sense of danger pressing inward on her chest increased. It almost felt as if she were lying flat on her back with a hand splayed across her sternum, pushing her down, the bones protecting her chest cavity creaking beneath the weight. Normally she liked the rain, liked the soothing white-noise of the repetitive sound. Just now though, the incoherent, plinking rhythm of it upon the roof above them were jangling her nerves something awful.

"Why are you stopping?" she asked.

"Hide," he ordered shortly, shooed her back toward a row of barrels pushed up against a piece of dusty machinery before starting forward.

She blinked, taken aback. "What—Clay…"

One of his hands went to his side, where she only just now saw the knife strapped there to his belt. Not as long or with the same curve as the one Jason carried in partner to the machete, but large nonetheless. He drew it with the soft shushing noise that accompanied the graze of sharp steel against leather sheath – a sound with which she had become very familiar – and angled his head to look around a corner into an empty stall. He looked like he was checking for movement, as if he anticipated something jumping out at them from the shadows.

Unease trickled down her spine like a drop of cold sweat. "What are you doing?" she hissed at him, pacing anxiously after him. "You have to go, _now._ "

Turning briefly at the waist he shot her a quelling glance.

" _Hide,_ " he repeated with the emphasis of a big brother who expected to be obeyed and clearly he had forgotten who his sister was because she was half an inch away from smacking the back of his head and blistering his hide with words straight out of their mom's book of worst scoldings imaginable. Except he had just turned to the wall at his right to study row upon neat row of tools – specifically the ones with sharp edges.

"Are you—" she began, only to swallow the unspoken question because clearly the answer was right there for her to witness as he seized the handle of a handheld scythe and plucked it from its resting place.

Yes, he was an idiot. A gigantic fucking idiot of the highest _fucking_ caliber, arming himself because he intended to stand his ground and fight.

"You can't fight him!"

"Shh."

" _Clay—"_

Her brother turned – no doubt to tell her to shut the hell up – just as the window behind him imploded.

Glass rained in glittering shards to the barn floor as two great arms extended through the frame to lock about Clay's torso. Whitney staggered backward on pure physical reflex from the sound and the spray of glass, nearly tripping over an overturned shovel as what little color there had been in Clay's face left it in a flood of white. His eyes went wide and his mouth dropped open as if to unleash a shout that didn't come. He gasped like a fish on dry land, struggling beneath the arms clamped about him while she watched, frozen, her veins crackling with ice as her nightmare came true right before her eyes.

The scythe blade flashed, arcing sharply backward as Clay drove it into the meat of Jason's shoulder – once, then twice – grunting with the exertion.

She felt her stomach heave at the sight, the glint of metal, the way it shone red when Clay pulled it free. She had taken half a darting step forward before prey-animal instinct tightened locked her joints to keep her firmly where she was; well out of range of impending danger and mind blank as paper.

Jason gave a heaving shove and Clay went sprawling across the barn floor, straight into a stack of crates that toppled around him with a wooden clatter.

"Run," Whitney hissed, shifting anxiously where she stood. Not that Clay would have obeyed even if he'd heard her. He rolled back to his feet, whirling somewhat unsteadily to face the opposition and she had to bite back the urge either to scream at him, or to launch herself at his back and drag him bodily away.

She knew her brother had gotten into his fair share of fights, most of them back in high school when to be an artist and yet look like a jock was to be uncool to the point of regular ridicule. But a couple of kids scrapping over petty school-age grievances was nowhere near what this was going to be; a full-on brawl where lives were on the line. He was plenty brave, that much was obvious just from what she was seeing now. Brave enough perhaps even to have stared a mountain lion in the eye and commanded it in silence to move. But she had read enough charts from patients transferred from her clinic to the ER across the city to know that bravery wasn't what won fights.

Without a care for the jagged remnants of the panes, Jason planted a hand against the low-seated frame of the window and vaulted the wall, landing with a muted crunch of scattered glass. Clay darted forward, attempting to use the opening. He slashed with the scythe, delivering a wide, brutal swipe fully intended to cleave open the belly and spill what lay inside.

For a terrible moment Whitney was sure the hit would land and it felt as though a fist were squeezing at her heart, the edges of her vision going dark – and it was with a not altogether unexpected snap of shock that she realized her terror was not reserved solely for her brother.

She felt almost faint, as though the inhale sucked in through her nose dissipated before it could reach her lungs – a feeling which left her in a tight rush as Jason dodged with a swift sidestep.

A massive hand snapped out, fisting in the sleeve at Clay's shoulder as he seized the other man and threw him down. And it was not at all the kind of throw she might have expected from him – almost lazy, like tossing a bale of hay. There was real hostility behind it, a violence bordered on savagery. For a second time Clay hit the ground, one of the crates he had overturned breaking beneath him with the same awful crack of splintering wood that would forever be tied to blood and death to her ears.

She knew this rage. She had seen it before; in the hands that had dragged Mike down through rotted floorboards, in the eyes that had later turned on her, burning black like hellfire coals. She saw it now in the way Jason bore down on her brother as Clay scrambled backward, trying to gain enough distance to get back on his feet. And yet…it wasn't quite the same.

She hadn't realized how cold his anger usually was; cold and clear and almost completely impassive. He had no real personal stake in any such encounter aside from a grudge that – or so she suspected – had become almost more habit than ruled by real temper. Vengeance for a remembered slight, not a direct one. It was almost robotic, a tune on a record played so many times over that the sound was scratched and faded and worn. He knew the outcome of each incident before it ever occurred and nothing any person could do was capable of surprising him, let alone bringing him any real danger.

Unlike this. Unlike now.

Because this wasn't just a fulfillment of his self-assigned mandate. Clay had done far worse than simply trespass. He'd entered Jason's home – his _sanctuary_. That made it personal.

Clay's shoulder banged the corner of an empty livestock stall as he struggled to stand, groping for something she couldn't make out until he flung himself at Jason, swinging the sledgehammer gripped tightly in his hand.

She let out a screech of dismay, yet Jason had already leaned sharply backward, narrowly preventing the heavy metal bludgeoning end from colliding with his ribs.

Clay attempted a second swing, the tendons in his neck visibly straining with the effort, but to no avail. Jason darted forward, moving with the fluid, whip-quick speed that didn't seem possible in a man so big, gripping the handle and, with a powerful combination of wrench and shove, sent Clay crashing into the wall with a shuddering rattle of tools and old wood.

Clay's face constricted, pain flashing across his features and in the way his spine curved away from the beam he'd struck. The cut across his cheek from his encounter with the bus windows was bleeding anew, a trickle of fresh red trailing down toward his lip. His eyelids fluttered briefly as though he were trying to blink back spots from his vision.

She had to stop this. How did she stop this?

She had already started forward, guided by the need to get to her brother, when Jason hurled the sledgehammer to the floor with a vicious burst of temper that had her shying defensively back for all it hadn't been aimed at her. It was unlike anything she had ever seen him do. He so rarely moved without clear purpose, and at first she didn't understand why he would throw away a perfectly good – perfectly _lethal_ – weapon like that. That was, until the machete came free, unsheathed from the straps at his side with that soft, almost melodic whisper of steel, and her pulse stuttered with a fresh stab of panic.

"No—!" she cried, but it made no difference.

Jason's slash seemed to slit the very air in two. Clay had caught the glint of metal and ducked so the blade sank into wood rather than his flesh, but Whitney was as much caught up in the blow itself as much as his escape.

The swing had been vicious, from the core, meant to cleave the body of a grown man in half. And Jason…Jason all but _radiated_ violence. The space around him might not blur and warp the way it did around incredible heat, but she felt it all the same, blazing the way embers would just as they were stoked back into a flame. A rage so different from what she'd seen in him before, heady and raw. There was fear there too, tangled in snarls amidst the rage. Fear of…something, and which caused her to rethink her earlier estimation as to its cause.

Oh, it was personal, of that much she was positive. But the direction, the focus wasn't right. Even when she and Mike had violated the sanctity of the house he hadn't been like this. Brutal, yes, and awfully so. But even then the brutality had felt contained, directed, as though he had trained himself to wield it like he did his weapons – efficiently and with discipline. There had been none of this unrestrained wildness.

That was the moment when she finally understood, as though a set of gears that had clashed and clanged in contention all night had suddenly stopped fighting and slipped smoothly into place.

He was _protecting_ her.

She hadn't seen it at the time, too consumed by stress and the relentless need to hurry. But looking back on it there had been an urgency to his tracking them in the tunnels that she hadn't expected to be there. He'd seemed almost frantic to get to her, as if acting as much on emotion as purpose. The way he'd reached for them, not quite entering the second tunnel, as though something he'd seen had urged him toward caution. Hell, the fact that he hadn't simply charged in from the trapdoor like a monstrously pissed-off rhinoceros and impaled them all spoke to a sentiment that didn't fit next to any of the reactionary responses she recognized. It wasn't the behavior of the cold, calculated killer. It was that of the man who had inserted himself between her and a big-ass predatory cat without a thought of the cost to himself.

From Jason's perspective any and all strangers were a threat to him – a threat he had had a great deal of time to acclimate himself to facing. Under normal circumstances he would have handled tonight's trespass like any other. Except it was anything but normal. Her presence had seen to that. Her presence, and the fact that he valued her enough to keep her not only alive, but content…enough to stay a killing blow to someone he saw as a threat because she had told him to stop.

Whatever she was – captive, friend, did it really matter? – to his eyes, Clay and Jenna had stolen her from where he'd tucked her safe and out of harm's way, where she belonged. He had been trying to rescue her, in his way, just as Clay had.

At least, it had begun that way. Until she had gone and chosen strangers over him.

And of course she had. She wanted to leave, as she had from the beginning. What were promises but empty words, after all? As soon as a viable opportunity had presented itself she had done what she could to get away, and clearly didn't care how she had to hurt him to do it.

Self-loathing welled in the back of her throat, bitter and foul like bile, acerbic as the pain that wrenched behind her sternum.

Clay had turned his evasion into an attack, launching himself headfirst into Jason's chest. His arms came up and around Jason's waist, and it was just enough to throw off the other man's impeccable balance to send them both stumbling into one of the thick beams fortifying the roof. The machete clattered to the barn floor. Clay straightened, head thrown back and fist raised – then he faltered, unsure where to direct his punch when the mask made any blow to the face wasted effort. The hesitation was brief, no more than half a second. But it was long enough.

One of Jason's hands rose, quick as a snake, seizing Clay by the wrist. The other rose to brace against Clay's collar as he twisted his torso sharply to the left. Clay struck the side of the wood chipper with a hollow clang, the breath leaving him in a wheeze as Jason's fingers tightened around the base of his throat.

And really, it had only been a matter of time. As tall as her brother was, as determined, as brave, Jason had him beat in every category from size to stamina and force of will, to sheer brute strength. Clay had been tiring fast, but Jason just seemed to feed from the scuffle, as sure as he'd been born to it which, in a way, she suppose he had been. Not that it stopped the dread from kicking at the pulse throbbing in her temples.

"Stop it," she shrieked, her voice raking in her raw throat.

The command had worked once before. Was it foolish to hope it might again?

" _Stop!"_

Her words had no effect. Clay was choking, gasping for air, and Jason's fingers were twisting into his hair, long and powerful and she knew that he would kill Clay right there with his bare hands. He was going to bash her brother's head in as he had neglected to before. Until nose broke and cheekbones caved in. Until eyes burst as skull gave way to reveal a pulp of blood and brain tissue. Or maybe in another second he would reach for the knife still sheathed at his hip, turn the blade and drive it deep into belly or throat in order to watch the life bleed dry.

There had to be a way to stop it. There _was_. She just wasn't seeing it, and all the while she didn't her hourglass was running down to the last few precious grains of sand, which only made it that much harder to goddamn think.

Her hand had risen to grip the locket, though she couldn't remember moving to do it, the enameled surface slick with rain; and as the cold metal of the clasp seared into her palm all the fear and kinetic horror raging inside her went abruptly calm, as though she had just stepped into the eye of her own internal hurricane.

"Jason."

The name came softly, so hoarse that it was nearly a whisper, yet it had the effect of a gunshot.

Jason's head snapped around so fast it was a wonder something didn't crack from the force of it. She took a step toward him, the first real step she had dared, and while it was difficult to see, she knew his eyes were riveted to her – all that inscrutable focus narrowed to the single point of her face.

Planting a great hand against Clay's chest, he shoved, sending her brother to the barn floor in a wheezing heap. His gaze never once leaving her.

"It's ok," she soothed, though her voice shook like a leaf in her mouth.

He echoed her step with one of his own, a slow, almost cautious thing, as though he weren't certain whether what he was seeing or hearing were real. He had a right to be wary; after all, she had done everything she could to evade him, trick him. But there, entwined within the caution was a delicate hope so keen she could almost taste it. Hope and question and longing.

A few weeks ago she would have put that look down to her resemblance to his mother and a wish for some kind of resurrection through her. But she knew better. She knew it as solidly as her body knew breath that he was hers. Utterly and completely. He would do whatever she asked of him, regardless of the risk. She could ask him to impale himself upon his own machete right here and now and he would do it without hesitation…if only she stayed.

Over the line of one broad shoulder, she caught the flicker of movement as Clay scrambled shakily to his feet. Jason should have noticed, should have heard, but he remained focused fixedly on her. And for a moment she allowed relief to overtake her at the chance provided for Clay to escape. Then she saw the gleam of metal, the open teeth of the bear trap Clay gripped between both hands as he crept up behind the other man – intent clear.

She might have claimed it was instinct, not conscious choice. That only belatedly had she realized the cost. But it would have been a lie. Freedom had been right there in front of her, wearing the guise of a metal trap.

She could have let him do it; could have let Clay clamp the metal jaws down into the meat of a shoulder, toss the connected chain into the motorized jaws of the wood chipper. She could have run with him. All the time she had spent trying to escape, to get home – all the tears and sweat and screams. But as she stared into the face of that freedom, it only made her feel cold.

" _Don't!"_ she cried, throwing up an arm, fingers splayed wide.

Clay faltered, brow creased with confusion that leveled to a defensive aggression when Jason whirled on him, powerful hand rising, curling into a fist.

"Don't," she repeated, and this time the word was not a warning but a command.

Instantly Jason's hand fell to his side, angling his body to put her back within his limited peripheral vision. In spite of her hope for it she was somewhat shocked by his quick compliance.

"It's ok," she repeated, with far more confidence this time. "I'm not going anywhere."

It had begun as a platitude, mild and soothing in the way of a lullaby – promising that everything would be all right even knowing monsters sill lurked in legion just on the other side of a meaningless barrier. But the instant it left her lips, the truth of it slammed into her so hard her vision actually blurred as though she'd been hit in the face.

All night long her focus had been getting Clay to safety. _You have to go_ she had kept saying – _you_ , not _we._ She didn't think it had been entirely conscious, but once seen she could no longer unsee it. All she had to do was think back to the moment she had seen his face peering pale and drawn at her in the harsh shadow of the tunnels, aiming the beam of his flashlight at her. At how relieved she had been that he was alive. It hadn't occurred to her that his having found her also meant that she was saved. She had been too preoccupied by her need to get him as far away from Crystal Lake as possible, away from danger. Away from her. When he'd refused to go without her she had relented out of necessity, but now…she wasn't sure she had ever intended to leave.

It was an unexpected revelation, and one which would require some close, and extreme, scrutiny when she had the time. Yet even as she drank in her own surprise she felt no inclination to modify the statement, not even when Clay's face became stricken and white.

" _What—_ "

She threw him a look the equivalent of a punch in the arm and a stern demand to _shut_ the hell _up_.

Jason's masked face was swiveling back and forth between them, his desire to punish the wrong warring with the one to go to her. His hands still hung limp at his sides, but she could still sense the latent tension in him. It would not take much to pitch him back into violence. Which was something she desperately wanted to avoid.

"Jason," she called again, and she lowered her extended hand, turning the quelling gesture into one of supplication.

It was all it took to make him choose.

He started for her, abandoning Clay to his open-mouthed gape in order to cross the barn floor with several swift strides.

Ignoring her extended hand he lifted both his own, using them to frame her face. He didn't touch her fully, merely hovered there, a fraction of an inch away, his gaze skimming up and down the length of her as if trying to determine whether she were hurt.

This whole time she had been wrong. So incredibly wrong.

She had assumed the directive to kill overpowered everything else, but it didn't. She had stood in the way of his beating Clay's brains out no less than twice tonight with no force, no threat, nothing but the power of her voice. Why? Because for whatever reason, even after everything, nothing was as important to him as she was.

A small sob caught at the back of her throat. Lifting her hand to one of his she pressed it to her cheek. It was the same hand with which he had gripped Clay by the nape of the neck, broad and wide enough to cover – or crush – her entire face, yet he merely let it rest there, fingers curving carefully around the back of her head. Gently he stroked the damp, tangled mess of her hair, his eyes softening, and once again she felt the warm, soothing feeling of letting go of the tension of the longest, most trying day of her life.

" _Whitney,"_ Clay hissed at her, the shock in his face outweighed only by his horror. " _What are you doing?_ "

His hands were white-knuckled where they clutched the trap. Everything about his posture – tight shoulders, stiff spine, clenched jaw – screamed that he was one bad choice away from hurling himself forward and reengaging a man nearly twice his size and easily three times his strength who would crush him like a twig underfoot. Which was something she could not have.

Though she held Jason's eyes with her own, it was to her brother she spoke, keeping her voice as calm and even as she had the power to. "You need to go. Now."

"What— _no_ ," Clay spluttered, "I'm _not_ leaving you with..."

The urge to roll her eyes was so powerful her face twitched as she checked the motion. Of all the times for him to be the supportive big brother, this was the worst possible one. He had left when she'd needed him those years ago, unable to stand the impending death sentence of mom's cancer, but now when she was all but physically shoving him top over teakettle he was planting himself like a tree and refusing? She wasn't the one in danger here, damn it – _read_ the fucking _room_.

For all she loved her brother she could very dearly strangle him. Really, what did he think the options were? Goodness only knew what Jason would do to get her back if she left – she didn't think wreaking Godzilla levels of destruction was an overestimation – and if Clay tried to forcibly take her he would only get himself torn in half.

"I can't leave yet," she said, and was she only imagining the frown in Jason's eyes? "I just...I can't."

An idea occurred to her then, wild, and she knew full well she might be grasping at impossible straws, but it was the only thing she could think of.

"You know the gas station along the highway? A few miles from the sign for the Camp."

She remembered passing the sign en route to the spot Wade and Richie had settled on as a campsite, though at the time she hadn't thought much of it – not even enough to retain the name of the camp itself until Wade's rather timely ghost story that night. The gas station had been a final stop for a real bathroom and any last minute supplies, and would serve as a meeting place she was relatively confident she could find again.

"I…yeah, but—"

"Meet me there in three days and I'll explain. Around noon. I promise, I'll be ok."

Clay frowned, brow creasing deeply. His grip on the trap had eased slightly if the pinkish flush at his knuckles was anything to go by, but he was still clearly reluctant to leave her.

"Trust me, please," she begged, and whether it was the word _please_ or the tone of her voice, something about it seemed to bother Jason.

The tension banished for those precious moments returned, coiling in the heavy muscles of his back and shoulders. A powerful arm curled around her waist, pulling her forward and into the shelter of his own body. His head dipped ever so slightly, angling to cast a narrow glare over one shoulder.

There was no sound, but she felt the subtle vibration of the growl as it rolled from somewhere deep within him, the fine hairs at the nape of her neck standing on end. It was pure warning: a wolf's bared teeth, a rattlesnake's hiss, a signal meant to stave off a threat that drew too near for comfort and promised swift death if it went ignored. The way he held her was aggressively protective: tight to his chest, one broad palm lying flat against her ribs, radiating hostility like heat off pavement. It was almost…possessive.

" _Go,"_ she snapped between gritted teeth, and finally Clay relented.

Bending cautiously, he lowered the trap to the floor, where he set it with a quiet metallic clank. "Three days," he agreed stiffly, backing slowly toward the shattered window, and at least he seemed to know better than to try going anywhere near the door when to do so would require passing them. "If you don't show I'm coming back here and I'm bringing the cops."

The snort caught in her sinuses, too overwhelmed by the force of her relief to form fully at the idea of any local policemen willingly setting foot on the land surrounding Crystal Lake, rescue mission or not. He'd either have to threaten or bribe them, and even then she was fairly certain no one would come. Still, she nodded once to seal the agreement.

The length of Jason's massive body went rigid as stone against her, suddenly alight with the subtle haze of kinetic energy as Clay reached the window, hands curving gingerly against the frame in preparation to hoist himself out. He meant to follow, she realized, follow and finish the work he had started now that he was assured she was whole and well. And in that moment, she wasn't altogether positive she could stop him again.

Half desperate and half in hope, she reached out and laid her palm against his chest.

He startled beneath her touch, head swiveling back around and down to stare at the hand resting lightly against him – so small and frail in contrast to the swell of muscle there. His inhale was sharp as a gasp, but he neither stepped away nor made to remove her hand.

"Don't," she pleaded softly, tilting her head back to meet his eyes. "Please, let him go. He's my brother."

If the word meant anything to him, he didn't show it. Nothing in what little she could make out of his expression changed, yet she kept going, words tumbling over her tongue in jagged fits and starts.

"The bag was his—the one you brought back. I thought he was dead and didn't...he thought he was saving me. And I—"

Her head was swimming, almost dizzy from the overload of stress she had forced her body through during this long, awful night; and she must have swayed or staggered, or something of the like, for she could feel his grip on her tighten, his empty hand rise to cup her elbow as if to prevent her from falling.

She swallowed, her throat suddenly tight with emotion too muddled to identify. Her chin wobbled, tucked down, her head dropping almost of its own will until it met the deep slope of his chest.

"Please just stay," she whispered. "Stay with me."

~/~

He had thought he understood the situation, thought his directive clear. He'd thought it up until the moment he descended into the hollowed corpse of the decrepit school bus to find her – when had turned, lifted his head, and found her folded into the alcove of a seat half a second before she struck.

He had felt the soles of her shoes slam hard into his chest and he had stumbled back, startled by the blow. She had not shown him violence in such a long time that it had genuinely shocked him. But more importantly it took his assumptions by the scruff of the neck and shook like a dog intent on snapping the neck of the rat cradled in its jaws.

She had not been taken. She had _left._

This had been a product of choice, not force. She had chosen – was choosing the second she made the decision to lash out, to flee again point blank as he held himself there at the lip of the tunnel opening and watched as she scrambled away. He easily could have stopped her. It would have been no difficult thing to lift himself free and seize her before she could haul herself from the belly of the dead vehicle. But he had been reeling, flooded from toes to brain with so much roiling emotion that he could only have watched and done his best to choke down the truth of what had just happened.

The last time she had run, when he had hurt her ankle, his refusal to let it stand had been solid – but not founded in the reasons it should have been. It should have been about the risk, the precedent, the vow he'd made. He'd already made an exception in not killing her, and so he'd told himself that was why he'd felt such a strong need to get her back. But even then he'd known there was something else there, some other reason he either hadn't fully grasped or wanted to acknowledge. Then she had promised not to run again, a promise she had kept, and he'd had no need to further examine what it might mean to go down into the tunnel and find her gone. It had not just been the precedent, it had been because he hadn't been able to stomach what his life would have become without her there. He knew it now. He had no choice but to acknowledge it, as the reality reared back to stare him straight in the eyes, as he fell into the tunnel mouth, bone cracking against metal hard enough that he felt the clamor of impact to his very marrow.

Confusion and hurt burst in dark stars behind his eyes, stung like a spearhead thrust through his chest. He had thought she was happy. Thought she cared, the way he had come to care, as she'd implied in her words, in her worry. Hadn't she? And she...she had _promised._

She had also asked for freedom just that night, and foolishly he had ignored it, ignored the tears that had so alarmed him, turned his face from the devastation on hers as though to look elsewhere was to make it not real. He had chosen to go, prioritized hunting these people who hadn't mattered at all when it came right down to it. At the time he hadn't known better – he hadn't fully yet grasped the immensity of her value.

He had thought himself beyond any need – any desire – for things like companionship or friendship; had been fool enough to think that Whitney's disruption of his life had no changed that. Had thought it up until the very moment she vanished through the open door of the bus to slip from his sight. And he had been woefully, laughably wrong.

Perhaps she had never truly resembled his mother at all. Perhaps he had simply glimpsed a few vague similarities and had wished so desperately for it to be that his mind had made it so, if only for an instant. Yet that primordial, deep-rooted desire for some scrap of togetherness had been so strong that it had transcended the resemblance even as it dissolved, enough to justify his excuses not to take her life and to keep his hands gentle. He had wanted someone, deep down in the still tender core he had armored-over with old, recollected hate.

He had wanted someone…and then he had wantedher. Very specifically _her:_ this girl, this _woman_ , that had smiled at him, teased him, laughed with him – but never _at_ him – that showed sympathy and concern when she thought him hurt, had apologized for things not of her own doing, for things that were. And he had kept her, fed her, kept her safe. He had protected her: and where he had questioned the why of it before he no longer did. That was what one did with something precious and beautiful, that made him feel like a person, real and solid and present again, rather than a vengeful ghost corporeal only long enough to kill. It meant that she was important to him, and that importance far outweighed the fact that the particulars of how were too new and convoluted to deconstruct just now. And if she was so important…then he should release her.

It took him a generous handful of moments to force himself to move, to extricate himself from the bus and find the deep tracks left in the rain-swollen earth. Far longer that he should have allowed. His chest throbbed, for all the kick delivered there had done no damage that wasn't already halfway healed, and his head spun as he stared down at the tracks and tried to decide what to do.

He should leave it. He should take this as the will of fate: allow the strange man to set her free as he had not been able to, and hang the risk. He owed her as much. It would be the right thing, the selfless thing.

But he was neither noble nor good. He was a child with the first taste of sugar on his tongue, a rabid dog with the first hint of blood slick upon his teeth. He was selfish. He was a _killer._ He was the monstrous bastard she had once deemed him to be. It might pain him – and it did, surprisingly – but a line had been crossed, and he could not go back.

It felt as though a wire had been strung around his heart and between his ribs, tight and pulling like a strange sort of snare. The other end of it, though, was not stationary, and he felt the tug the farther his lack of motion allowed her to draw further away. Like a leashed thing, he followed it, and once again he hardly needed the scans he occasionally took of the ground to check the trail in order to do so.

He began the trek in a state of dejected resolve, almost disgusted with himself and his inability to let go. But as he went, with every step the dejection seemed to jostle, with every breath, every turn of his mind, details began to sharpen and...confound.

The more he thought about it, the less sense he could make of it, and the more strange details stood out, clashing in his mind like the wrong two pieces of a jigsaw puzzle jammed badly together.

She had been crying when he'd left her – angry. Yet her anger, and even her tears, had been strange. He'd thought there might have been a tang of fear on her. Or was that an illusion made in skewed hindsight? He supposed this might have been a part of why he'd jumped so quickly to the assumption that she had been kidnapped rather than rescued, but as he took a moment to be truly, brutally honest with himself he could see now that the possibility of that had been slim to ridiculous proportions. How could she have been taken against her will when she had already wanted to go? And if she had not been afraid of the people whom he had so clearly been preparing to hunt down...what had been the cause of the fear?

What would have made her turn from contented and smiling and teasing (he distinctly recalled a lighthearted demand to be brought something in return for leaving without her early that morning) to tearful, soul-deep sorrow and pleas to be set free? What had driven her to run – to want to? After everything.

He had left off cracking the man's skull open only because he had heard her screaming. He had thought it pain, or fear, and had gone to her because - as was plenty evident now - she was priority above even the death price. She'd looked him straight in the eye before she'd struck like a snake, and when he recollected only what he had seen absent his own relief and subsequent shock, he could remember the pain that had been there, as though she didn't want to do what she was about to do - as if she were being torn straight in half. He didn't understand it; too naïve, too unworldly to decode it as if structured in another language. But he could recognize now that there was something going on that escaped his understanding. And he knew it had something to do with the man with her.

The man Whitney clearly preferred over Jason.

He was familiar enough with jealousy. He'd felt the bitter bite of it almost constantly as a child. But to feel it stinging like barbs curling under his skin as he made his way through the mud and rain in steady pursuit was both startling and uncomfortable.

He might have stopped feeling it quite so fiercely, but he had never truly stopped envying other people their even, symmetrical features, or stopped caring how starkly they marked him different. It was an old hurt, and though it festered beneath the scab he was accustomed to it. Yet he was used to it being vague and non-specific, a general envy of people in general for their collective normalcy. To envy someone because of what they might be to another person was completely alien to him. At least it had been before tonight when it had risen up and sunk its teeth into his jugular no less than twice. But that was exactly what this was: envy of that normalcy, that symmetrical perfection, of people suited to someone as beautiful as Whitney was in ways he had never been. Never could be.

Loathing sparked, the need to kill pooling in his mouth and singing in his veins, narrowing his focus, quickening his stride; and it had had nothing to do with the tithe and everything to do with the fact that this trespasser, this filthy, perfect human man had taken her from him.

But he would not have her.

By the time Jason had tracked them to the barn he had shoved the human pieces of himself so far down beneath the predator that he was barely cognizant of anything outside of what he could directly sense. The barn itself, the familiar terrain, the probability of location and reaction. Instinct guided him around the back, hunter reflexes urging him through the window. He had thrown himself into it, locking his arms around the man's body and squeezing like a python, and all the burning stab of the blade into his shoulder had done was tell him he was dealing with a slightly more wily than average adversary.

The man had held his own with thanks to pure adrenaline, staving off blows that would have decimated any smaller or less astute specimen. But adrenaline didn't last, and Jason had schooled himself in how to play the long game: the days-long rounds, the nighttime stalkings, the hunts undertaken at a headlong run. The payoff was endurance, a stamina that compounded with his size made for only one possible outcome.

He bided his time, waiting for the moment to come, not hearing Whitney screaming for him to stop for the roaring in his ears. And when it came he seized it with both hands.

Digging his fingers into tender throat he pressed just tightly enough at the jugular to send the message to his prey that the fight was over. A message instantly received it seemed, for the struggling abruptly lessened and primal fear rounded the whites of eyes that were a little too green, though why that sent a peal of sadness down his spine Jason couldn't in the moment recall.

There was a part of him that enjoyed it – an infinitesimal part, but a part nonetheless – being bigger, being stronger, being as much a force as a man. He might not relish the violence itself (a fact tested and which still held true), but he did enjoy having become the monster, enjoyed putting fear in the faces of those that had destroyed everything good. Everything he had once been.

His grip changed as he steeled himself for a messy kill, lip curling beneath the mask as the roaring in his ears pitched to an eager whine.

It had been his name on her lips that broke him from it, that reached past the haze of anger, the demand for blood. For an instant she seized hold of him like a puppet, turning his head, pulling his eyes to her as though by some unknown sorcery, and he had no attention to spare for the life in his hands or the death to be paid.

She held out a hand to him – pleading, beseeching – and he pushed the man away, no longer caring whether he breathed or not, but hesitated. He had assumed she would flee while he occupied himself with his blood-mongering, assumed he would have to chase her down again as he had before, but she had stood her ground…and was telling him it was ok, all while looking at him with something like relief in her face.

He was inescapably confused.

The confusion only mounted when her expression changed, horror lashing her slight form with tension cast over his shoulder and he whirled on instinct, sure, for a split second, that the moment of connection had been a trick, a ploy to distract or disarm him. A certainty that seemed proven by the trap clutched and ready in the man's hands. He should not have felt betrayed – that reality had come and past – but he had, even if only briefly, and his fist rose as if guided by the hollow emptiness. But Whitney called again, and to obey seemed to be a thing impossible not to do.

He adjusted so he could see her at the corner of his vision, studying her as a wave of different emotions chased one another across her features. Some he recognized, surprise, awe, comprehension, but others he didn't. He couldn't have guessed what she would say when she spoke again, but even his guesses wouldn't have contained what she actually said.

" _I'm not going anywhere."_

Again she extended an upturned palm, and his body knew what to do even as his brain reeled. He was searching as he reached her, looking for blood, for signs of injury, almost helpless to do otherwise. And when he had lifted a hand, not quite daring to touch her, when she had laid her hand across his and pressed his palm to her cheek…he no longer cared about anything else. As the full force of her heat bled into him, as his heart beat hard and nearly painful in his chest, he no longer cared about what she had done or why she'd done it. Any of it. The only thing that mattered in all of existence was her.

Awareness prickled at his back at the sound of a sharp inhale, a terse hiss of words. He almost turned his head, but Whitney held him with her eyes, warm and brown. She proceeded to argue with the man behind him, and with every word he was given bits and pieces of the context he'd been missing.

The man had not been a stranger to her. The revelation dawned swiftly as he listened to the sharp exchange, followed immediately by the understanding that the relationship was a close one. He could tell by the tone each used with the other, though it was more evident in her simply because he knew her better, recognized the affects fear and urgency and frustration had on her voice. How close, though? Close like the two perfect blondes twined on the bed in that house?

The image brought a fresh pang of envy, and of something else Jason hadn't felt before – something which had him reaching impulsively for her, hand curling around her and tucking her close. In doing so he understood something he had witnessed, touch mistaken for force when it had really been this; defensive, protective, and the thought that any living thing could believe she required protection from him would have been laughable had he not been quite so occupied with the idea of Whitney being – _doing_ – that with…

He didn't know when exactly he had bared his teeth, almost didn't realize it until he felt the reverberation of his own growl. It was done without his express control, but only because what he had wanted was not to issue such a bland, quiet one-note warning. He had wanted words to throw, to wield as he might have any weapon, to make his position clear.

But what position was that? What exactly would he say had he the power? That Whitney was his now? She wasn't. Not in any way. She no more belonged to him than did any other living thing, no more than any of the lives he took in order to deliver back to the earth. Just because it was what he wanted didn't make it real, as he should well have figured out by now. Even if he'd possessed the power of speech he would have been left standing there, bristling and at a loss as to what to do with the fierce possessiveness he had no right to feel.

Movement snared his focus as the man bent slightly at the knees, gaze wavering between Jason and Whitney as he lowered the trap he had meant to use against Jason to the floor. He backed away, and instinctively Jason stiffened, the call to chase pulling like a fishing line tied tight to his gut.

A touch, soft and slight as a dove, brushed his chest. His gaze flew back to the woman nestled in the curve of his arm, her hand laid flat against the place where she had struck him so sharply before.

"Please, let him go."

It was almost eerily easy to succumb, as though her nearness, her touch, served as a buffer of sorts, easing the pressure of the need to satiate the vow. It was novel, strange, and might haunt him later – but in the moment the choice had been easy, almost so much so that it ceased to be entirely. He could see the tithe paid and destroy something precious to him, or…he could _not_. Between the death of one human and the life of another, he chose life as he had only once before.

It was as though the tithe itself bowed to her.

"He's my brother."

Brother. Her…brother?

He had no siblings, but the concept wasn't so foreign that it confounded him so much that it caught him by surprise. Until abruptly it didn't. There had been green in the man's eyes, green so bright that it had seemed too much, made him feel…too much, that didn't belong anywhere alongside a death. A hint of russet to his dark hair. A similar slant to the bone structure in the face. A likeness – faint, but there.

She continued to speak, a jumble of words and phrases spilling from her mouth in the way of excuses with none of the empty, shallow platitude and almost more feeling than he could stand.

Suddenly it made sense why she had been unhappy when he'd left her, why she'd cried and refused to tell him why. The desperate devastation. Why she had fought him the way she had, all the while wearing regret as if it had been sewn into her skin. She hadn't wanted to fight him at all, but she'd known her brother was there and that Jason would be compelled to kill him for his trespass; had believed that even had she told him he would still have done it.

He frowned, somewhat ruffled at this, wanting to insist that he most certainly _would not_ have. Yet he knew rationally that she had not been wrong. He couldn't quite see himself having the capacity to hear such a thing and feel the meaning of it – or even care – had the night not proceeded in quite the way it had. Perhaps not. But if he could not be sure, how could he have expected certainty of her?

Whitney's eyelids fluttered; tired, worn and a little sad. Then she leaned forward to rest her head against his chest, her cheek burning cool through his shirt.

She had never reached for him like that, just for the sake of touching him. As if for comfort, for solace…

"Stay..."

Her whisper trailed fine and warm along his spine, a precise echo of the only words he would ever have spoken. The flicker of unease at the man's retreat guttered and died, the faint wail at the back of his mind going silent. For the first time in his memory he didn't feel the compulsive itch of it at the nape of his neck, the need to satisfy the demon pact he had made with the land. All the rules by which he had lived for so long subverted in the single instant it took for the tithe to bow to the greater power.

He just felt her.

* * *

 **NOTES:**

And lo – I have corrected the canon.

(I'm only being slightly sarcastic.)

Also, I literally finished this tonight and I apologize for any typos/weirdness as I wanted to update asap.

Anywhoodles, posting this makes me extremely anxious because I feel like there was a big crazy buildup and I can't help feeling like no matter what I do now the rest of this story will be a letdown? I'm just in a nervous place right now, but the worry is there.

Ok, so the movie-finale change. This was another of those first really sharply defined images I had in the very conception stages of the fic. Honestly, a lot of it stems from frustration, because I physically cannot watch this part of the movie and not get angry. I just…can't get over the waste of epic proportions in the handling of the kidnapping side-plot. Whoever's idea it was, bless you, but also god damn whoever's it was to BOTCH it like that. I think my feelings on the timeline have been made abundantly clear by now, but seriously. What. The. Fuck. You. Jackholes.

There is so much going on in that tiny little moment where Jason stops mid-murder because Whitney calls him. She doesn't tell him to stop, she barely even moves, and he just fucking abandons ship (for the second time, hello). Mad props to Derek for being such an incredible physical actor that he can convey so much with barely more than a head tilt. Guh. I'm getting feels just thinking about it. And yet again I'm so disappointed in the way Whitney was written like a complete brainless idiot that doesn't see what's right in front of her goddamn face.

Also, I know it really depends on interpretation, but through my lens, when Jason's all caught up in the chain and makes a grab for her, he's not going for the locket. There's a reason it fell. Am I reading too much into it? Almost 99% yes. Do I care? Not a single fraction of a bit.

So yeah, anyway. I have strong feelings about that scene.

Also, I want to take a moment to address what might be the least realistic part of the chapter, which is Clay taking the goddamn hint and leaving. As someone who has older siblings – two sisters who I adore, and would absolutely throw myself in front of a bus for – I like to think said siblings would know and trust me enough to take me at my word even in a situation as crazy and precarious as this one. That said, can we really know how we would respond to something until we're there in the midst of it? Considering that's an underlying theme (I hate that word, damn you endless literature classes) of this stupid story, probably not. So it might be stretching it a bit…but I really could not see any other way around the knothole that is Clay. Bless his puppy heart.

And speaking of puppy hearts – why is Jason not chasing his ass down not the most unrealistic part? Because frankly even in canon I have a hard time believing he wouldn't do whatever it took for Whitney to stay with him, and if she's literally telling him she'll do it of her own will if he lets her brother live…I just happened to give them relationship building to make that even more believable.

This chapter wasn't originally going to end here. I actually had continued on before the POV break and realized I didn't like the structure and added the Jason part to be more present instead of reflective, which added five more pages and turned what I had into a BEAST. Which would have been fine, except I wasn't close to done. So I'm cutting it here for the sake of updating.

If this was the resolution you wanted and don't need/want anymore, I salute and thank you for your time and I love you. Though I do hope most of you stick around, because I promise I'll make it worth your while.

-dirty wink-

As always, thank you all for the favorites and the comments that insert much-needed serotonin into my crazy brain. I love you guys so freaking much.

Until next time!


	16. Six Feet Under

**CHAPTER 16  
Six Feet Under**

~/13/~

He moved not a bit except to breathe, the rise and fall of it steady and sure beneath her cheek, his hands solid at her back, her arm, to keep her close. And with every second spent with her rather than extricating himself to follow Clay, the adrenaline in her blood ebbed like a tide.

As it fled, so too did the barrier it had formed against the pain. The ache in her left knee and hip were the first she registered, from her moment of clumsiness inside the bus. Soreness in her back, sides, and shoulder were quick to follow, blooming like deep bruises, and she had scraped her right elbow at some point during the mad-dash flight. The muscles in her upper arms felt tight and stripped, as did her throat from screaming. Overall she felt thoroughly run-down, her very bones heavy with the lethargy of spent urgency; and yet feeling it was an immense relief. It was a far, far cry better than to have been gutted by the death of her brother.

She turned her head slightly, her fingers curling into Jason's stained shirt-front. Right over the very place she had kicked him.

 _Kicked_ _him,_ for fuck's sake. Like an absolute _asshole._

Regret curdled sour in her mouth. She had made a vast number of mistakes over the course of the night, but that was by far the worst.

Tilting her head back, she peered up at him, concern creasing her brow. "Did I hurt you?"

The mask shadowed his eyes quite heavily from this angle, but she could still see the slight softening around their edges at the question. He shook his head, but the denial didn't lessen her guilt.

"I'm sorry." The emotion behind it set a slight tremor to the words. "I didn't know what else to do and I panicked."

The hand curved against her waist pressed gently. She didn't deserve that gentleness, nor the forgiveness she felt in it, but the presence of each was a clear glimpse into his nature. Whether she was deserving or not, she could see her own worth as it was to him, and it was both touching and awful.

"I didn't mean it," she added, and the desperation with which she needed him to understand this was suddenly so great she was sure it would suffocate her if she didn't get it out. "I wanted to protect my brother and I didn't…I didn't know if you would—if you could hear me if I told you. I should have just told you to begin with. I'm sorry."

Seemingly confident she wasn't going to collapse he released the steadying grip he'd had at her elbow. He lifted the hand, laying the tip of his index finger lightly across her mouth, the touch so faint it could barely be called more than a skimming brush of callus against her lips. Had she been actively speaking, the intent would clearly have been to shush her. Since she wasn't, the meaning was somewhat slower to dawn on her, but after a moment she understood.

 _Stop apologizing,_ it said. Or perhaps, in a more roundabout way, it was his way of offering a reassurance, a way to tell her it was all right (even though it wasn't) with his limited means of communication.

She still wasn't sure if he understood all of what had happened; whether he knew or remembered what _brother_ meant, or whether he'd put it together contextually. But whether he did or not, it didn't seem to matter. He only seemed concerned with the fact that she was still there. Something for which he had been willing to pay with a life.

In the moment the significance of this hadn't quite hit her, so consumed had she been with making it happen – balancing a fine scale of hope, desperation, and will. It hit her now as it hadn't then: a swift constriction rather than a blow.

She might not know the exact parameters of his directive, but it seemed pretty evident that anyone who entered the lake property, the campground, or the surrounding area he viewed as his was met with death. No exceptions, no way out. A hitherto unbreakable law he had broken for her no less than two times. Even then, it was one thing to spare _her_ life, whatever his reasons might have been then, but it was an entirely different matter for him to spare someone else simply becauseshe had _asked_ him to.

That was no small thing. Not by any sense of the word.

She averted her gaze from Jason's, his fingertip brushing her chin as she turned her face, only to abruptly think better of glancing at the ruined window.

A shiver crawled spider-like down her back, with another chasing right on its heels. The rain had had the effect of a fever breaking, a breath of real air after the oppressive, suffocating heat of the days past. She was cold – actually _cold_ – for the first time in weeks. Her sodden, muddy clothes were dragging at her, heavy and uncomfortable, and she was completely exhausted from the wild ricochets between almost debilitating despair and soaring, dizzying hope. She wanted a hot bath and her worn old slippers with the hole in the heel and a fucking whiskey.

Was it safe to move? If she broke this moment, would it break his decision not to go after Clay? She didn't think he would. Jason wasn't fickle. Any indecision he displayed tended to be brief, and although she was still inclined to shy away from it, he wasn't showing any hint of uncertainty about staying right where he was.

Swallowing the worry, she looked back up at him. "Can we go back now? I need hot water, and maybe..."

He was in motion almost before the phrase fully formed, stepping back and away from her. She experienced a quick flash of panic when he moved toward the window which quickly eased when she realized he was only retrieving the machete from where it lay, slipping it back into its straps with a quick snap of a wrist. He returned to her then, ushering her toward the open barn doors in that distinctly mother hen-like way he had and she acquiesced without question, relieved in spite of herself.

She saw the blood as he passed beneath the light overhead, streaking the side of his left pant leg from knee to hem. That hadn't come from a victim, she realized as she squinted at it. The raw, clean tear in the cloth, though…that most definitely had.

"You're bleeding," she said, the words faint, almost startled. She had been so strangely sure he was beyond injury in her own head that to see evidence of a wound was jarring.

Jason didn't so much as pause in his steps, not even when she jogged to catch up and reached to grasp at his elbow, unsurprised when he simply kept walking.

"You're injured— _wait._ "

She wasn't sure if it was because of her words or the tone, but he stopped walking, head angling down as she crouched to get a better look at the wound. She pinched the heavy duck cloth, avoiding the opening and most of the blood as she studied what lay beneath. Something had been thrust into the heavy muscle of the thigh just above his knee, and honestly it was by fortuitous chance that it had missed the thick tendons running along the back of it, which would most certainly have been disabling. It bled sluggishly, yet not nearly as much as it should have considering how much running and falling and twisting he had done throughout the night. She didn't know when he had received it, before he'd come back to the tunnels, certainly, long enough to already be infected.

There was a faint touch at her shoulder and she glanced up.

Jason held out a hand, palm flat and parallel to the ground, whereupon he made a faint patting motion that meant absolutely nothing to her.

"What?"

He made the gesture again: two short, tiny pats as though administering affection to the head of an invisible animal, before he bent slightly to tuck the hand beneath her arm. That, at least, was clear, and grudgingly she let him coax her back to her feet.

"We need to look at that," she insisted as he resumed his walk to the door, appearing completely unperturbed by the injury.

He shook his head in a firm unmistakable negative.

"What do you mean, no? You—"

Once again he stopped, nearly causing her to collide with his back. He turned to her, reaching to bracket her face with his hands the way he had done earlier, head moving as if scanning her for injury he had already established she did not have.

"What are—?" she began, utterly bewildered. Her head was beginning to hurt now, the fine muscles leading from back to neck to skull starting to ache. "Jason, I'm fine."

The second she said it his hands fell back to his sides. He nodded once, almost eagerly, and repeated the little patting gesture.

Finally it clicked. He was literally saying _I'm ok_ , in a strange way that she had never seen before, but was plenty obvious now.

"All right," she relented halfheartedly, "but…are you sure? That's a lot of blood."

He gave a little half shrug, drawing her attention almost magnetically to the wet gleam at his shoulder.

 _"Jesus—!"_

She seized his arm, eyes wide and color draining from her face as she wrenched at his sleeve, making him bend so she could better see the gouge in the muscle where shoulder met chest – where Clay had managed to land a few blows with the hand scythe.

Peeling the coat away from where it had shredded around the blade of the scythe she winced. The cuts were nasty, jagged and curved and probably deeper than they looked. One of them would need stitching at the absolute least, and she wasn't sure if she had the nerve left to stumble her way through a procedure like that...

Long fingers circled her wrist to gently, if firmly, pull her hand away – her fingertips coming away red. But when her eyes darted to his masked face as he straightened the eyes beneath it were calm, clear, and unconcerned.

He had said he was all right, but there was no way he could be. Not with an injury this bad. And yet the way he was looking at her was almost beseeching, as if to say: _trust me._

She knew he had scars, had seen one or two of them with her own eyes, so clearly he wasn't a stranger to being wounded. And clearly he had survived this long. Too long to not know what he was proverbially talking about. She supposed she had no choice _but_ to trust him, it wasn't like she could make him sit the hell down so she could stich him up…well, actually she probably could. But if he didn't need her to, then it was better not to exert the effort – or else risk _really_ screwing something up.

What was he, exactly? A zombie? But he wasn't rotted or decayed, and what little she could see of his skin on any given day appeared healthy, if a tad on the weather-beaten side. Maybe he was some kind of corporeal ghost? But he was warm, and obviously he possessed both a pulse and the blood-flow it accompanied. He breathed, he could eat. She supposed he was just a man, if an unusual one.

Very unusual.

He was holding his hand out for her to take. His fingers were grimier than usual, a result of the messy nature of the night's activities, but it was the blood on her own skin that caused her to hesitate for reasons she couldn't have explained. It wasn't like he'd never gotten blood on himself – she'd seen it. And this blood was his, not that of some now-dead stranger. Still, something about it made her feel downright squicky.

She didn't take the hand, choosing instead to loop her arm around the bend of his elbow. This seemed to throw him for a moment, but then, seemingly satisfied, he led her out into the rain.

In the end she was glad of her choice to take his arm, for she ended up clinging there like a barnacle a little ways into the trek just to keep herself from slipping face- or ass-first to the ground. The earth was reacting as it did after a prolonged stint with no rainfall, doing its best to soak up the water but simply unable to keep up with the sheer amount, resulting in the soil becoming a slick, spongy mess that sucked at the feet like quicksand. As she was battling her own exhaustion as much as the terrain, walking was difficult to the point of frustration.

She struggled so much that eventually Jason simply picked her up and carried her the rest of the way through the unfamiliar stretch of woods. For once she fully welcomed it, leaning heavily against his uninjured shoulder, and though she couldn't help fretting about the damage her extra weight was causing his collection of wounds, she didn't have the will to put up a fight.

It felt so normal to be carried this way between the trees – just the two of them. Just when it had become so, she wasn't sure, but it was as if time had rendered her blind to the unusual nature of the situation. The sudden break in the comfortable pattern seemed to have opened her eyes anew. But the funny thing was, in spite of the oddness, the comfort, the niceness, hadn't changed. Even the rain no longer bothered her aside from the cold. At a certain point it was impossible to become any wetter, and she had passed that point some time ago.

She almost didn't recognize the camp when they came to it, the strange route having turned familiar landmarks alien in the dark. It was only when he was rounding the side of the building that she realized he had brought her straight to the bathrooms.

Scaling the single step, he set her down just inside the threshold, and only with the absence of his arms around her did she notice how badly she was shivering.

Yeah, not good. Cold, definitely, and possibly a hint of shock. The temperature wasn't low enough to be worried about things like frostbite, but the combination of cold and shock was something to be avoided if possible. She was very much in need of a hot shower.

She started to turn inside, but something stopped her…something about the way he had released her, slowly, with something close to hesitation. The way he was hovering there in the doorway as if apprehensive. He seemed reluctant to let her out of his sight, as though to do so would be to see her gone like smoke from a smothered flame.

Before she realized it she had curled her clean fingers into his sleeve, tugging gently.

"Come on," she said, "you can wait inside if it'll make you feel better."

He blinked at her, his eyes creasing slightly with uncertainty, and if she'd had any misgivings about her invitation they were gone at the sight of it.

"Come on," she coaxed, and when she tugged again he allowed her to tow him inside.

She couldn't be sure how much of his apparent reluctance was due to being inside a space that he associated with unpleasant things or due to the space itself and what it meant. His shoulders were hunched inward, his head slightly ducked as he stood there just inside the open doorway like the most awkward overgrown puppy that ever lived. It was…well, it was cute. A little on the heartbreaking side, but cute. Which, really, she probably shouldn't be thinking when he had almost killed what was likely the only family she had left just minutes ago. Except, the sense of connection that made her think it was likely the self-same thing responsible for his having not done the killing. So, she supposed the thought wasn't all bad.

Her grip at his coat loosened, fell to his hand, her first two fingers curling around his thumb. "It's ok," she soothed, "I'm right here."

His chin dipped, bringing his eyes to rest on her face. No longer burning with that virulent mix of rage and fear, they were once again earnest and sweet, if a little wider than usual.

Squeezing gently, she let go, and turned her attention to getting herself warm.

Bracing her palms against the nearest sink, she toed her way out of the muddy disaster her shoes had become, leaving them precisely where they fell in an effort to spread as little mess to require later cleaning. The socks beneath were completely soaked, and she peeled them off, gingerly rolling up the mud-sodden hems of her pants (which required a subsequent rinse of her hands) before padding down the length of the building to the cabinet on the balls of her feet – trying not to focus on how goddamn cold the cement floor was.

Pulling open the door she glanced inside, pressing her lips together at the neatly folded dress that sat there.

Right. Damn.

She had been meaning to stow extra clothes here for occasions not unlike this one, since the walk from the house to the bathrooms was, while not extraneous, long enough. Thus far though, she'd only gotten around to bringing the dress – a pale yellow summery thing – and a single pair of underwear. In her defense, it had been a hot, dry August up until now. It was decidedly _not_ the best attire for tromping around in the woods, and certainly not in the middle of a deluge. Still, it was dry, and that was a definite step up from where she was now.

Sighing, she slapped the fresh clothes on top of a clean towel and set the lot on the sink counter. Her hands rose to the frayed old ribbon tied about her neck, slipping the knot free. Gently she tucked the locket into the folds of the dress for safekeeping until she was clean and dry.

Out of the corner of her eye she noticed Jason moving deeper into the room, his need to keep her close evidently winning out over his dislike of being inside.

Through the mirror she saw him eyeing the remnants of the missing shower curtain, torn shreds of plastic still clinging to the rings. Had that been his handiwork, or his mother's? The hunting grounds were the same, which made it possible for either of them to have done it, and the rumors were fairly explicit about the vicious results of Pamela's quest for vengeance. The woman had loved her son; that much was very clear.

Pivoting on the balls of her feet, she stepped from cement to the only partially warmer chipped tile of the shower stall within which she had taken to leaving her soaps and other things inside.

Gripping the edge of the curtain she made to pull it closed, but paused mid-motion, taking in the man standing stiff and uncertain by the row of sinks, his masked face angled downward as if memorizing the fine cracks in the cement.

"Hey," she called softly, waiting until he glanced up. "I'm right here, ok?"

He didn't move by much aside from a very slight head-tilt, but she felt her mouth curve with a smile all the same. Small, yes, but genuine and warm.

She gave the curtain a short tug to slide it into place before setting about ridding herself of her sodden, muddied clothes. Wadding them into balls, she ended up tossing them over the wall separating her stall from the one next to it. She didn't have the energy to deal with them now, and it seemed cleaner that way. When time came, she could just wash whatever mess they made directly down the drain. Nice and easy – in theory.

The bandages she removed last.

She couldn't have said why. They were smeared with dirt and completely saturated with rain by now, yet the task of unwinding them felt strangely significant – far more so than such a simple act should have. It was almost as if she was subconsciously reluctant to do it, and equally reluctant to toss them with the rest of her dirty clothes. It felt disrespectful somehow, which was sentiment she couldn't even describe as silly when she considered what they symbolized: those two lengths of sodden gauze.

The same care behind those bandages was responsible for her well-meaning idiot of a brother still drawing breath, and the reason she was still here. Had it not been for them – had Jason been any less of what he was and any more of the psychopath she had initially taken him for – the night would have ended very differently, and chances were there would be two more corpses for him to deal with. Had she not been so receptive to the fact he was not a monster beyond reach or feeling, and had he not come to value and trust her, the night never would have come to pass at all.

Like bones, everything was connected. So maybe it was a little silly to so carefully wind the dirty bandaging into a coil, or to toss it over the wall with quite the amount of painstaking gentleness she used. It didn't feel silly to Whitney.

Twisting the dial, she let out the strangled approximation of a whimper as, with a brief rattling of pipes hot water streamed down into her upturned hands. She turned, tipping her head back beneath the downpour and inhaling the wafts of steam beginning to rise around her.

The heat felt so good that it nearly stung; and as the cold was driven out with that singular melting sensation that always made he think of a frozen turkey set to thaw in the microwave, the aches and pains from the night began to lessen. The combined efforts of warmth and the massaging effect of the modest water pressure eased the tension in her back and in the muscles stretching from shoulders and neck to skull. She began to feel like a person again, not a creature of mere gut-response and raw nerves.

Soreness upon waking was inevitable at this point – she had put her body through the wringer. But she took the time to do some stretching anyway in the hopes to avoid being completely physically incapacitated. It wouldn't do to be so wrecked that she couldn't move except to whine and spit curses.

She was just dousing her washcloth with soap when she noticed the movement on the other side of the curtain.

The plastic was opaque off-white. It was designed to let in enough light from the fixtures to see but also to prevent anyone from seeing in, which created something of a back-light affect, allowing her to see the rough silhouette of Jason's form pacing back and forth in front of the sinks. She paused to watch, unable to help the slight resurgence of concern. His strides were sharp and short, not quite prowling but definitely restless, even jittery. He knew full well she was right there...but maybe that didn't matter. Maybe simply having her out of his direct line of sight just now was enough. She had to remember that she wasn't the only one to go through an ordeal tonight, even if said ordeal was vastly different than her own.

One thing above all others could not be understated: he was attached to her, and rather significantly so were she to take the cues at face value. Maybe she couldn't know the exact complexities and distinction of that attachment, but some things didn't need words. She had come to mean a great deal, and when she looked at what had transpired through just her _estimation_ of what his lens might be...even poor Jenna's death was in some way understandable.

As predicted, the thought of the girl she had only known for the space of a few minutes doused her in a wave of sorrow at the sheer waste of it. The killing no longer seemed the inhuman, unforgivable thing she had once so vehemently judged it to be, but that didn't change the fact that it had been unnecessary and sad, and that the world was less one small but far from insignificant spot of brightness.

And honestly, while she might be there now, he had no real reason to believe she intended to stay – only her word. The same word she had given before only to then break tonight, whether she had intended to or not.

She turned slightly; putting her back to the spray to better follow Jason's agitated pacing. He seemed to have understood the reasons she'd given, at least enough to be getting along with, but she had still broken his trust. She had run after having promised she wouldn't, and the whys of it didn't matter any more than how far she had or hadn't gone. Maybe that betrayal was enough. Maybe it was all that had come before it. Maybe it had nothing at all to do with her and was instead due to having let Clay leave with his heart still beating, two things which she had surmised could not exist in tandem. Had it become a compulsion of sorts? Was he even now fighting the urge to finish the job?

Her lips parted, in the hopes of mustering words of calming and reassurance. Words that did not come. She had nothing left, no energy, no ingenuity, nothing but a yearning for rest and useless bits of information that floated constantly around in the spaces of her brain like dust motes. Names, dates, random facts...and song lyrics.

Tucking the bottle of soap back on the little shelf in the tile, she pressed the washcloth against her shoulder and began to hum.

The song itself was just the first thing that came to her – a soft, rather sad song that she would had taken to listening to when in need of a good cry. Truth be told, the second she started she was struck with the absolute certainty that he wouldn't be able to hear her over the running water. A certainty which was disproven when she saw his movements slow out of the corner of her eye.

She committed fully to washing then, dragging the sudsy cloth down her arms and across her chest and neck, keeping up the steady hum, and found by the time she had worked down to her shins, doing so had the added benefit of soothing herself as well. If she could produce song notes, then all must, in fact, be well. By the time she was rinsing the cloth clean Jason had stopped pacing altogether – which relieved the last remnants of her worry.

She took the opportunity to wash and thoroughly condition her hair, liberally saturating it with product and leaving it there, piled in a gooey mass atop her head for the rough count of two minutes. The sweat from the hot day and the mud and dirt from the night's escapades combined with the humidity would not have done it any favors, and she sent out a silent thought of thanks for the quality of the bath supplies.

Whitney stayed beneath the water until the tips of her fingers began to wrinkle and crease. With a small pang of wistful regret she shut the water off, only for the sound of the running water to be instantly replaced by the soft patter of the rainfall upon the roof. It was much quieter now, indicating the small summer gale had lessened somewhat.

Squeezing as much of the water from her hair as she could, she gripped the edge of the curtain and poked her head out, gaze immediately landing on Jason's hulking form.

He had been standing with his profile to her until the faint clatter of the plastic rings sliding a few inches along the bar that held them caught his attention. He turned his head to look her way, and Whitney felt something flip almost anxiously beneath her sternum.

It hadn't felt weird before – neither her general state of nakedness, nor the subsequent and automatic vulnerability that came with it – but it did now.

She had momentarily forgotten...not where she was, exactly, but that she was still very much aware of him in a way that couldn't be labeled as entirely innocent, or even appropriate to the situation. She'd had to shove it aside and out of the way during the course of the night, else it rise up and interfere with everything else she had to deal with; because it wasn't simply attraction. Attraction wasn't enough to distract her to the point of standing by while he murdered her brother, nor was it enough to make her stare in the face of the escape she had seemingly coveted for weeks and simply not want it.

Not nearly.

She no longer found herself in a position to label what she felt for Jason as merely physical – not without making herself a liar. It was more than that, just as it was more than the avoidant escapism she briefly thought the sense of peace she had come to find in this place must be. She could no longer consider herself a stress-addled girl trying to survive by leaning into whatever scraps of humanity she could find in the face of a killer. How could she call it that when said killer had showed more real _humanity_ than half the people she had come into contact with during the day in and day out of the life she had once considered hers?

Very distinctly _once,_ as in no longer.

For she could no longer deem the choices that had brought her here the results of consequence. She had made them consciously and willingly both, knowing – at least in part – what they would bring. The question was why.

 _"I'm not going anywhere."_

As the minutes passed the vividness of it faded, but she could still recall the way the sudden understanding had hit her, the abrupt rush of calm almost akin to struggling against drowning the split second before realizing she could touch her feet to the bottom and stand. Anyone else might have deemed the decision a product of insanity, even if it had been made purely to save another life. Yet all Whitney had to do was look at Jason in order to know the answer.

He had spent years, decades perhaps, on his own. Solitude was likely as breathing to him, normal to the point of unnoticed habit, but she couldn't shake the feeling that she had uprooted his sense of normalcy as much as he had hers, leaving their separate lives at once irreparably changed and forever intertwined. Neither of them could go back to what had been. How was she supposed to leave him to the scattered pieces left in the wake of her disruption as though he possessed less feeling even than a houseplant? It would have been cruel, wrong. Though it had been a decision made in a split-instant under stress, she felt no different now. The idea of leaving him alone out here in the wild – of leaving at all – brought a hollow, empty pang to her belly. She hadn't been able to stomach it: not then, not now.

Yet it wasn't just that. She had come to feel strangely free with him here, in this simpler, calmer world away from the incessant demand more, always _more_ ; more time, more energy, more commitment, more forward momentum, more... _everything._ Everything until the people in it simply stopped, having given everything of themselves to the machine.

She had found a sense of simplicity she hadn't known she craved until she fell head over knees into it, a chaos different from the kind that had been slowly stifling the life out of her. She had gone so long floundering around in her own life without even realizing the things she had been using to feed herself and her soul had really been only splints and bandages at best; enough to keep her limping through the current she had been wading along, but not enough to last her much longer. Not knowing what she wanted until it had quite literally walked up, hauled her over a shoulder, and carried her off like a prize won in battle.

"Um—could you..." she indicated the little pile that was her fresh clothes and towel.

It had been habit to leave them there, stacked neatly at the sinks in the absence of any form of hook or more closely situated surface to set them on. She hadn't thought to do anything different until now.

At first he didn't respond, even in the form of puzzlement. He just continued to look at her, the spaces behind the eyes of the mask black with shadow. Then, with an almost startled jolt, he twisted to the left where the pile of folded fabrics waited, scooping them up almost gingerly.

He took a cautious step toward her, and it was a caution she didn't understand. Surely he didn't think she was going to run away? He took another few steps, slowly making his way toward her across the narrow space of floor between the sinks and the showers, and he seemed so genuinely uneasy. She might have thought it embarrassment, but that didn't seem quite right. Nor did respectful consideration for her modesty. He wouldn't have any concept of that, would he? But...maybe he did, for he seemed almost shy as he finally drew close enough to stand, towering, before her.

The backlit affect was still too harsh for her to clearly see, but when she extended a hand to take the proffered bundle of towel and clothes she was certain his eyes had trailed from her face down the line of her throat to where she clutched the curtain to her chest.

A soft ripple of warmth chased up Whitney's spine, goosebumps rising in its wake, her throat tightening with sudden uncertainty.

She knew that it couldn't be the first time he'd been in the vicinity of a naked woman. With the number of teens – specifically teen couples – that went missing in the area, he had to have seen his share of people banging each other in the woods. And if he had spent any sort of time around other children of his own age range, to say nothing of the counselors, it didn't seem out of line to assume he knew something. Even if that was only bits and pieces copied from sources that knew little more than he himself did – absorbed from observing adults without the context to explain why something was. Shame in flesh, in nakedness, in sex, even if they didn't know it yet. He simply had no reason to look at the women he saw and register anything but flesh in its purest and simplest form – as a vessel for a living soul.

She had never felt so...exposed. Not even when she had been buck naked for the first time in front of her first boyfriend, when she had probably been too young to be naked with a boy and too naive to understand why. But standing there now she felt self-conscious and vulnerable; and it wasn't merely because of the bare skin but because it was _him,_ and because being bare in front of him made her wonder if it was even at all possible he might see her as something more than just another human who happened to possess a female shape.

Her knuckles curled into the proffered cloth as she took the bundle from him, uttering a mousy murmur of thanks that dropped off into a strangled silence when his hand lifted slightly, reaching until the very tips of callused fingers brushed the bruises she knew had to be blossoming across the crest of her shoulder. There was question in his shadowed eyes when they flicked back to her face, and she knew he was only showing concern for the injury she had done herself – slight though it might be – but knowing it didn't stop the tiny giddy rush of nerves in the pit of her stomach. One which she recognized all too clearly.

Evidently it didn't matter how bone-tired she was, or how vehement her certainty that it would never be reciprocated. His lack of awareness toward the nuances was not enough to deter the conditioned response she had to being stripped to the skin within view of a man she had daydreamed about more than once.

It didn't even seem to matter that he'd just thrown her brother around like a ragdoll he was doing his damnedest to peel the stuffing from, or that he'd nearly tore Clay's throat out with his bare hands. It probably _should_ have, and yet peering up at him – unrelenting giant of a man that he was – not a single part of her was afraid. Sure, she felt a little guilty about it, but the parts of her brain still deeply rooted in the primordial were unable to disregard an appreciation for the occasional display of brute strength. There was something about a man throwing himself headlong into a fight for her – being willing to _kill_ for her – and she knew it was because she was exhausted, her brain fogged by hot water and heavy, humid air, but damn if her hands didn't clutch at the plastic of the curtain a little more tightly.

"I'm all right," she reassured him. "It's just been a rough night."

She heard him release a heavy breath. _Yes,_ it seemed to agree, _quite so._

He drew back, allowing her to duck behind the curtain and press her shoulder blades into the cool surface of the tile, sucking in a breath that went down like southern summer heat.

 _Breathe,_ she told herself. _Calm down._

Heightened levels of stress could do this; make people experience reality through a particular lens, make them do and feel things they might not otherwise. She was suffering from the effects of exhaustion. She was sore and drained, and while she might still be riding on the last strains of her adrenaline high, she was also emotionally vulnerable and craving comfort. Which wasn't wrong, except…

At least some of what she felt was reciprocated; the sense of friendship hard-won, of affection bordered on belonging, the sense of possessiveness that organically accompanied such things. He had bonded to her naturally from turmoil and pain and mutual healing, cared for her now beyond mere obligation. He would not have put her above killing, otherwise. But it did not mean he saw her differently than he had before. If he had looked at her the way he had back in the barn, as though he would give his very soul just to keep her, it was only because he had discovered his own loneliness and saw her as the key to end it. If he looked at her and wanted, it was for this, nothing more. And maybe it wasn't quite the way she wanted, but it was enough. It was _more_ than enough.

Come morning, with rest and time and the freedom to climb back down from the stress, she wouldn't feel quite so raw. There were other things to think about, such as what came now that she was hip-deep in the aftermath of such important choices.

~/~

She had been shivering.

He remembered being unsure what to do, too cautious to hold her more tightly for fear she might prove to be an illusion and just as hesitant to move for the same exact reason. Eventually they would have to, for if she was real, then she was cold – too cold to remain out here in a drafty barn barely solid enough to keep out the rain. Yet he couldn't bring himself to break the soft moment of quiet.

She was still here. _How_ was she still here?

He peered down at her, craning his head slightly to see around the hindrance of the mask. The desperation was gone, as was the dreadful, hollow terror she'd worn all night. Her face was slack now where it rested against the base of his sternum, but she still carried a fine wire of tension strung between her shoulders, belying the relief in her posture.

He had managed to wrap his mind around what must have occurred: the pack he had found in the camp had belonged to her brother, which had caused the seemingly out-of-nowhere fit of sorrow and fury. By a borderline miraculous twist of luck, said brother had found the house and the tunnels underneath, found her, released her, and she had naturally gone with him. He was family; they shared a mother. It might not alter what he thought about the man's presence on his land, but Jason could comprehend and give that the honor it deserved. It explained so much of what had happened, so much of the decisions she had made, the actions she – and her brother – had undertaken. But what he was having difficulty reconciling was these actions in conjunction with her inevitable decision to remain behind.

" _Stay with me,"_ she had whispered, sagging against him as if half in weariness and half in the hope that her delicate weight might be enough to hold him there, as if he were capable of even wanting to be anywhere else. Yet that wasn't what suddenly caught in his memory like a snag in a coil of twine.

In the moment he had simply been overwhelmed by the feel of her hand – her _cheek_ – against him, warm and trembling ever so slightly with breath and (as he belatedly realized) with cold. His world had been reduced to her presence there. Only now that his mind had ceased reeling was he able to think beyond the surface-level truths and the soaring hope that had overtaken everything else, running through calculations with the speed and ferocity of a world-class mathematician performing sums.

The question wasn't how, but why. Because every indication had said that she wanted – needed, even – to go. She might not have wanted to hurt Jason, but her greater loyalty would have undoubtedly been to her brother. It seemingly had been until the very moment at which his death was beyond any denial, at which point she had reached out with open hand and that soft plea in her eyes.

Was that...was _that_ why she had stayed? In payment for her brother's life?

Something lodged deep within him recoiled.

He didn't want that. He vehemently _did not_ want it. But what could he do when want and regret felt the same? Because of course, it must be true. He had given her no other choice but to barter herself, her company, her _life_ , as if he were a bear to be placated by a cut of meat – brutish and uncaring for what she might have wanted. What else could she have done? Not even he could promise that he might not have simply continued his slaughter and dragged her back to her admittedly now broken chains if she had not. Such was the depth and horror of his greed.

It shamed him to know it, but he did not allow himself to brush that shame aside. He deserved to feel it, all the heavy, chafing weight of it, because the realization that she would have been taking a vital piece of himself with her should she leave was not enough to justify coercion. If that's what it had been. He could not even simply _ask_ her; ask if the only reason she was nestled there against him, sagging with relief and shivering, was that she felt she must. He had never wanted to ask a question so badly in his life, not like this one did, so fierce that it throbbed in him – a scream with nowhere to go. He felt as though he were drowning; not at the stealthy, crushing hand of the water, but for all the words he could not say, clogged like ashes inside his useless mouth.

It didn't really matter now. He had forced her hand and now he must live with the results of his own overbearing refusal to lose the only beautiful thing his wretched excuse for a life had given him. Which he might well have lost regardless simply by route the actions he'd taken not to.

The instant she spoke, bringing up the idea of hot water, it offered him the direction he so desperately needed – something concrete to focus on, to _do_. He had proceeded to usher her out of the barn, content to leave the mess for later. He had been so narrowly centered on his task that he hadn't noticed her speaking, calling for him to wait, to stop, until she physically grabbed him by the arm.

It wasn't her digging her heels into the floor that brought him pause. She was far too light to have held him back should he choose to ignore her – which, of course, was something he no longer appeared capable of doing. It was that she could have simply brushed her fingers across his sleeve and he would have stopped dead in his tracks like a dog called to heel. No sooner had he turned to look then he found her vanished, having sunk into a crouch with a murmur that sounded like concern. The next thing he knew, she was plucking at the leg of his pants where the poker had rent and sunk into flesh, drawing it away from the wound there as she craned her head to get a better look.

The angry tear in his thigh was already healing; in earnest now that he was no longer using his body like a bludgeon. Not that she would know that. The healer in her was responding to the injury as if he were any other human. As if he were like her.

He couldn't tell if the ache in his chest at the thought was pain or pleasure.

He pulled her to her feet in spite of her protests, trying not to pay too much attention to the concern creasing her brow. It didn't mean what he wished it did, only that she was kind and caring and far more decent that he had ever been or would ever be. Almost immediately upon rising she made a strangled sound of alarm and latched onto his jacket like a barnacle, pulling until he relented and bent so she could perform another surface examination of the fresh gouges in his shoulder.

He might have pretended only to humor her, but he couldn't deny that it felt like vindication of sorts. She _did_ care; at least on some level. Enough for these easy worries, so natural for someone so inclined to nurturing. That should have been enough for him, for it was more than he had possessed for over two thirds of his existence, yet he couldn't quite put his finger on how it wasn't. Not why, he knew why. Because he was covetous and wanted more, but he didn't know what _more_ meant. There seemed to be a void of sorts inside him, an open, gaping place that bled and throbbed worse than any injury, absent of everything but a yearning that he could feel, but could not name. It was, however, enough for Jason to tell himself that it _was_ that simple; that she had chosen for herself and not for...other reasons. That nothing had changed.

He endured her fussing for a moment or two before removing her hands, the pressing need to see to her far more delicate health overriding his relish of her worry. His wounds, as they were, would mend on their own. But he could not have her catching ill from cold and from the strain and being unable to heal her.

Had there been any other way to get her from the barn to the bathrooms without trudging across several miles of forest in the wet and cold, he would have taken that way, however long or grueling it might have been. It wasn't that the rain had worsened, but rather that there had been, and still was, so _much_ of it. Water had soaked the ground beyond its capacity to handle – too much to absorb – to the point where the soil had transformed into a slog of mud and soaked-spongy loam. It was as if the earth itself were drowning, spitting excess water from its lungs in effort to breathe. It was not the worst deluge he'd experienced, but it was by far the worst he had been caught in. Much of the reason for this wasn't even for his own sake, but for Whitney's.

She was struggling to walk. The muck of the sodden ground was pulling at her, clutching at her feet and sucking with the force of gravity. She was trying to fight it, he could feel that in the grip she had on his arm, nails biting nearly through his sleeve in her effort, but she was simply too small and too tired to combat it with any amount of success. Eventually he simply couldn't stand it anymore. She slipped, staggered, her weight veering away from him, and he bent almost more on reflex than by choice to sweep her from the murky ground.

Immediately he felt her forearm wind around the back of his neck, her body leaning somewhat gingerly into him as if in care of the rapidly healing wounds there. A dull throb accompanied the following beat of his heart, which he ignored in favor of pinning his attention on something that made sense to him – a mission, a goal, a job to do.

Only when he had set her down outside the door of the outbuilding did it occur to him that _hot water_ might have meant something else other than the showers, but it seemed right. She didn't appear surprised or displeased to be there, at least, which was good. A shower would do much to return her core body temperature to where it should be, to say nothing of washing away the dirt and mud from the course of the night and staving off a cold. For whatever reason, however, opening his arms to let her slip free felt like prying apart a pair of iron jaws - simple in theory but requiring much more effort than initially planned. It was as if his mind and body were diametrically opposed: the one very much wanting her to go inside and get warm while the other didn't want her anywhere he could not see her, possibly ever again.

It was more than foolhardy. There was nowhere to go in there, and no way to get out but for this very doorway. She wasn't going to simply up and vanish. And yet...maybe it was simply that the imprints of fear and rage and everything else were too fresh, but just then the impossible felt like a very real possibility. Whether that was the reason or not he was slow to withdraw, fighting the urge all the while to simply _not_ let go.

The catch of her fingers against the ragged hem of his sleeve dragged his attention downward.

"You can wait inside—" Her voice was hoarse now, a rough, scraped tone underneath the soft, low notes. From all the screaming she had done – that _he'd_ caused her to do. "If it'll make you feel better."

His gaze flicked sharply to her face. She wasn't smiling outright, but there was a gentle sort of knowing about her expression that he had seen more than once before – the kind of look that said she understood far more than she probably should. Was he that obvious? Was he so transparent that she could see right through his mask and skin and all the layers he had built up to protect himself? Clearly, yes.

Only after he processed this did he fully hear what she'd said. He felt a frown creasing the furrow between his brows. Wait...inside? Inside the bathroom?

Without reason, he did not set foot inside the structures within the camp; it was one of his oldest rules, one which predated his own untimely death. They were small spaces which did not belong to him set within a larger space that did, little pockets of a life he had only ever had in part and had no desire to be return to, spaces he had not entered unless forced to do so by some particularly invasive trespasser. So when he felt her soft tug at his sleeve his instinctive response was to stay rooted precisely where he was. Yet he followed. He followed because regardless of the logic (or lack thereof), the need to keep her within sight was louder and more pressing than anything else, and if that meant straying into one of the loathed buildings then so be it.

He had to duck slightly to keep from smacking his head into the frame as he entered, and he straightened now, his eyes flicked from corner to corner, performing a rapid sweep of the room purely by habit. As soon as he crossed the threshold, he felt the hair-fine vibration of his own hyper-awareness tighten like a snare line down his spine. It hadn't left him since finding the knapsack earlier that night, merely ebbed and grew as events required, as it did now for reasons he could only assume were to do with his discomfort being inside the building itself rather than the fact that there was any danger.

He had been inside this particular building just the once since Whitney had become his accidental guest. At the time he'd had the purpose in her injured ankle to guide him, and he had managed to get back outside before he began to feel the walls start closing in. Now, though, escape was not an option. He could feel his own mind working to shut out the anxious tang hovering at the back of it. The bathrooms in particular generated a very specific kind of unease, one the name for which escaped him. He had no language for the concept of trauma, just the kind of knowledge that became founded in frequent and repeated experience, which he had become quite adept at deflecting before they could overtake and control him. But the other effects were not so easy to smother.

Her skin was cold when she found his hand, fingers circling at the bend of his thumb. The reflex he felt (and subsequently quashed) to recoil had little to do with this, however. He had no cause to be jumpy. She had touched him before scant minutes ago, had been in his _arms_ not half a moment past, and yet he found himself biting back the urge to back away from what was clearly meant as a calming gesture.

"It's ok, I'm right here."

And so she was.

So why did he still feel so on edge? Were he to judge by what had been rapidly becoming pattern, the touch should have soothed him at least somewhat. But he was not soothed. If anything else, he felt more ruffled and tense than he had any reason to be.

She left him then to bustle about the bathroom, shucking shoes and gathering towels, quick, precise motions belying her own form of discomfort, which he watched only vaguely, out of focus as the gears in his mind struggled to turn as though they had become somehow compromised. Which they were. It simply didn't become clear as to why until after she stepped into the niche of a shower stall and the opaque, colorless plastic of the curtain whisked closed.

A wad of dark cloth arced over the tiled partition separating one stall from another, wet and mud-streaked, and he realized with a sudden sharp jolt in the pit of his stomach that it was the shirt she had been wearing. And he was utterly incapable of comprehending the reasons behind such an act, so consumed was he by the memory which proceed to burst inside his brain with all the destructive force of an aneurysm.

It had not happened all that long ago, mere hours: fragments of time within the magnitude of decades. He couldn't understand how he could have forgotten, considering how thoroughly the moment had thrown his entire universe from its axis. It must have been because the threat had outweighed the rest of it, being the more pressing demand for his attention; he hadn't had the time out freedom to remember what had happened during the hunt – either what he'd seen or what it had sparked in him. Either way, he remembered now. He remembered the way his mind had taken the image and form of the blond girl and replaced it as completely as cutting a piece from a photograph and inserting another into the blank space. He remembered the dizziness, the pulse throbbing in his temples, the warmth crawling across his skin and threading through his veins, the tightness in his back and chest and groin. The need so fierce that it had all but crippled him.

Piece after piece of clothing followed: bundled up and tossed into the adjoining stall. He tracked each as closely as a hawk would something small and furred and meant to be eaten, consumed by the realization that every article shed rendered her closer to being naked than the last, and unable for the life of him to focus on anything else.

He could vaguely remember that there was supposed to be an element of shame to nakedness, though he had never really learned why, and thus had never acquired a sense of shame of his own. He could remember things his mother would say; little things buried inside little rules taken at face value that now he thought of them, no longer seemed clear or straightforward as they had to the mind of a child. The simplistic, vague in the extreme answer of _because_ was no longer satisfactory.

Even if he had no awareness of his own body aside from its use as a vessel, he understood the necessity for clothing where it protection was concerned: from weather, discomfort, and so forth. But this didn't explain the rest. It didn't explain the reflex of every human he had encountered in any state of or close to undress to shield themselves at the sight of him. Surely the more imperative survival instinct should be to flee? After all clothing did nothing to shield from a blade. And yet they always did so, ducking and scrabbling for their cloth coverings as though they truly believed themselves safer with them...or else driven to by some other, more powerful impulse.

What would she look like, he wondered. What did a woman who was not prey – not reeking of alcohol and fear – look like? Similar to those that did, he assumed. Similar to the blond girl in the window aside from those little insignificant details had that made all the difference.

The idea terrified him as much as it intrigued him. It was one thing to have a lightning-flash image in his head, but another thing to really think about it. To have her right there, scant yards away, with all the moments he had spent over the last few weeks studying her, strangely transfixed by the sight and shape of bare legs, bare shoulders, making a kind of sense they had not before. He had wanted to look at her, beautiful as she was. He had wanted to _touch_ her; not in the plain pointed ways of purpose – to guide or steady, to carry, or to bind – but simply for the sake of it. To lay his palms against the bare skin that had seized and held his attention and follow the shape it sheathed...

While his memory was, by all accounts, quite good, after so many faces and so much death the details tended to run together like watercolors until they mixed into a vague, gray-brown slurry. Yet something stirred at the back of his mind like a photograph disturbed from its resting place to flutter to the ground. A memory, a place; a kill. A cluttered hay loft, a sledgehammer, a young man in a dingy baseball capreeking of sour sweat and skunk musk, a coarse hand sliding along the plastic curves forming the pretense of a woman's breasts.

His mind recoiled from the recollection. He still felt he must be missing a few slivers of potentially crucial information, but there was no denying the parallel his urge had taken to the moment that had oddly disturbed him at the time. It disturbed him much more now, for to link himself in any way to such a repulsive example of humanity was intolerable. Yet it wasn't as though he could eradicate the similarity. As to the thing itself; the heat curling low in his belly held the weight of unfolding knowledge, slow, but as steady and impossible to halt as was gravity. He couldn't stop it, nor could he deny it however much he might wish to.

The hoarse metallic _screek_ of an old faucet came from behind the closed curtain, preceding the sound of running water. Fine threads of steam were quick to follow, accompanied by a garbled whimper from the girl hidden there.

His revulsion waned at the sound; defensive reflex that it was.

She was not like that young man: she was not repulsive in any way and if _she_ wasn't, then this wasn't. Nothing tied to her could be. Maybe before he would still feel the reflex was a valid response, but the events of the night had altered this confusion somewhat. Specifically the uncomfortable physical reaction he'd had to what was essentially no more than an unclothed female form.

He might have had some experience with the too-heavy tension in the groin and assumed it to be some kind of sensory reflex. But it had never occurred to him that it might be intrinsically linked to nakedness, or, perhaps more simply, the fact that he had thought girls pretty before death had dragged him under and spat him back out.

He had thought Whitney pretty from the beginning, but he didn't know at what point she had gone from the random girl who had happened to somewhat resemble his mother for a brief, possibly hallucinatory moment to a beautiful woman in her own right. Nor did he know at what point he had regained the ability to distinguish enough difference between the two for it to matter – boy, girl, woman, man. He wasn't the boy he had been, small and weak and too shy to make eye contact, and she wasn't one of girls he had admired from unnoticeable distances, though she absolutely would have been. All he knew was that she had gone from the one to the other.

The more time he had spent with her – the more he began to _know_ her – the more she had distanced herself from his previously unshakable notions of what people were and the more he came to suspect that small, seemingly insignificant childhood interest had never truly left him. The difference between then and now was that the appreciation was no longer simply a visual one, the way he might regard flowers or fresh snow. Now there was a drive to action, one which seemed embedded into his bloodcells for all he could not put name or purpose to them. He understood an urge to eat was to satiate hunger, an urge to drink to satiate thirst, those for sleep and shelter and other things he no longer had much use for. But what was this intended to satiate?

Unbidden his mind brought forth the image of the two perfect people glimpsed through glass; pressed together, limbs tangled, grasping at one another. Suspicion joined his puzzlement, only increasing when the memory shifted to become another, to recollect the boy – _man_ – she had been with.

Not her brother, not this night; but before, when he had watched her and her friends as he had watched all the others, measuredly, from a distance, taking stock as they split into groups. Tall, though not as tall as the brother, with dark, curling hair and a long nose set in a thin, symmetrical face. He remembered they had been holding hands – a detail tucked away and nearly lost. But he remembered it now, and what it had meant to be with someone in the holding hands kind of way. Or…what it had been to a child.

They had also _kissed._ Not on cheeks or foreheads, the way his mother had kissed him. But that other way: mouth to mouth. How had he not realized it until now?

His mind brought forth the image of the two perfect people glimpsed through glass; pressed together, limbs tangled, grasping at one another. Such kissing almost always accompanied that behavior. And if Whitney had done the one, then logic said she must have...

The thought made his stomach sink with a noxious blend of jealousy and despair. It wasn't just that the other man had been even and symmetrical – perfect, the way _she_ was perfect. It was that Jason had slaughtered him in front of her. Perhaps not directly, yet even if she hadn't seen she would have heard all those awful sounds.

Already winding down dark places, it didn't take much for him to imagine how easily that man's death might have been hers. He hadn't been careful – he'd had no reason to be. He had struck blindly and without caring which of them he hit. Had just one tiny variable been different it might have been her body he pulled down through the floor; flesh peeling away in shreds upon the broken boards, joins snapped from their moorings, screams forced in a gurgling wheeze from lungs pierced by shattered ribs. It might have been her head he'd taken between his hands and pulled until her spine popped and split. He wouldn't have seen her face – the nonexistent resemblance – until it was too late. The thought turned his blood to ice even in the hazy, steam-ridden warmth from the running water.

For all the sour dislike Jason felt about the man, he was gladder of nothing more than that he'd been there with her to take the brunt of Jason's rage. To help her get away just long enough for it to matter. He had been so close to hurting her, so close to never having seen her, _known_ her. Yet he couldn't shake the blame he felt, nor the surety that even if he had not been born hideous, he would still be a monster.

A soft sound rose above the rhythmic thrum of the water from the showerhead and upon the roof above. Quiet notes, just loud enough to be heard over the din.

His body stilled, the better to listen, and only when the motion stopped did he realize he had been pacing along the line of sinks like a creature in a cage, a manifestation of the puzzlement and nervous energy collected until it had to forced itself outward. There was a faint ache at the corner of his jaw where his teeth had been grinding together, and he could tell from the dull points of pain in his palm that there would be shallow crescent grooves where his nails had bitten, blunt as they were. Yet no longer. And as it had before, her voice soothed him with a speed and efficiency that should not have been possible, as though she were a balm fused into human shape: relief from the perdition he had unwittingly forged for himself.

He focused on it, preferring the sound of her voice over the snarls in his head, matching his breathing to the pace of Whitney's gentle hum until both it and the running water quieted.

The rings of the shower curtain clattered faintly. His head twisted to look as if driven by reflex, some deep-buried need to verify she was there or well – though he already knew perfectly well she must be – and he knew it for the mistake it was the very second his eyes reached her.

He could see very little: she had pulled back the curtain only by a few inches, holding it to her body like a shield so that only her head and one shoulder was visible. Yet it was like a switch had been flipped deep in his brain. Now that he'd seen it, he couldn't unsee, thrown from total ignorance into hyper-awareness within the space of hours. All he could think of was the way he had seen the girl in the window and pictured her, wondered what it would feel like to feel her weight atop him like that, those slender limbs wrapped around him the way the blond girl's had around the perfect boy he had killed in a fit of loathing.

She was regarding him steadily, in that not-quite expectant way of hers, and he was abruptly aware that a nervous sweat had begun to rise at the nape of his neck.

She had said something…asked him something? He hadn't heard. He'd been too distracted to hear – a moth scalded by flame and lying stunned, fluttering weakly in the aftermath. He stared at her, eyes widening with steadily growing alarm, trying to scrape together some clue as to what she wanted.

Her hand was extended, pale arm gleaming in the harsh yellow-white of the old lights. She was pointing to something. He turned slightly, gaze falling to the bundle of cloth left on the counter between two sinks – the towel and fresh clothes. _That_ was what she wanted. And of course it was. It wasn't as though she'd been able to take them in with her, and it wasn't as though she were going to walk out to retrieve them.

The thought caused his heart to throb so sharply in his chest that he was half convinced it was going to burst.

He grabbed at the neatly folded pile with a lurch, staggering forward in what must have been the purely physical equivalent of being tongue-tied, at once trying not to look at her and trying not to take a bad step on suddenly shaky and unreliable legs. As his feet carried him closer, he experienced a shallow pinch of tension in his gut – the familiar urge to flee from the situation and from her. He had thought it must have something to do with the uncanny power she'd seemed to have over him, and while he hadn't been entirely wrong, he was aware now that the exact context of that power was...somewhat different from what he'd had in mind at the time.

Feeling uncharacteristically clumsy and far, far too large for the space, he offered the bundle, his heart giving another panicked stutter against his rib cage when she made to take it from him. He didn't know where to look or, almost worse, where not to look – his eyes skimming from her face, away, back and down, until with the retraction of her arm he caught sight of the faint marks spreading violet across the cream-pale skin of her shoulder.

 _Bruises._

Immediately his unease burned away, overpowered by a fierce surge of protectiveness and sinking regret. Once he focused, he could see them clearly – following the crest of the shoulder and blooming like a stain along her upper arm, her elbow, and reaching inward.

He was more than certain he hadn't been the cause, at least not directly. But simply because it hadn't been his hands to make the marks didn't make him any less responsible for them. He had put her in a position where she had to fight him, flee from him, and that meant that her falls – as with the scrapes and wounds that had resulted – were as much a result of his actions as they were her own, whether he had intended them or not. Intent only meant so much, doubly so when he could not explain it.

He reached without intending to, the pads of his fingers already skimming across the joint of that shoulder before it occurred to him what he was actually doing.

He was already familiar with just how soft her skin was from the contact he'd had with her thus far, but the sensation of it under his touch seemed so much more than he could recollect – smooth and beaded with water that glittered like bits of glass. Her wet hair plastered to her neck, hanging straight now as it never did dry. A single water-dark strand of it trailed down to curve with the arc of a collarbone. He wanted to brush it back over her shoulder, and yet he didn't dare.

He had touched her so many times before, had carried her tucked close against his own body, and yet not even that had felt the way just the idea of this did. Improper. Illicit. He couldn't have described why. It was just that she was so clean and white, and so impossibly beautiful standing there that it cowed him. She was like a bird: something bright and colorful like a cardinal he had kept caged for far too long, greedily determined to keep that beauty to himself. One that, much to his surprise, had chosen to sit perched atop the bars even after having managed to slip free.

He didn't need to look down at himself to know that his boots were caked with mud, that his clothes were streaked with blood. He had spent the night tracking human prey through the woods; he was dirty and monstrous, and he should not be touching her, should not be looking at her when he could not remember if to do so bordered on some kind of insult the way his brain was frantically hissing at him that it was.

But Whitney didn't look insulted, or even uncomfortable. She looked healthy and a little tired, lips and cheeks flushed pink by warmth.

"I'm all right."

Something in her face didn't quite match her tone when she said it, and yet the reassurance did what she obviously meant it. When she followed it up with a remark on how trying the night had been, he found himself able to release the breath he hadn't realized he had been holding.

With deliberate effort he stepped away, allowing his hand to slip from her arm and fall to his side. The curtain whisked closed and he drifted back to the sinks in a winded daze.

When she emerged a few moments later she was clothed again and squeezing at the ends of her damp hair with the towel. The dress she now wore was a light, buttery yellow with a line of tiny round buttons running from neckline to hem and fell almost to her knees. It didn't cling like her other clothes had, and yet the way it draped was almost worse; somehow emphasizing the graceful dip and flare from waist to hips, the length of her legs, sleek and softly curving in a way a man's legs definitely did not. The faded ribbon had been retied about her neck, holding his mother's locket securely in place where it rested between the graceful arcs of her collarbones and the soft swell of her breasts.

He shifted his weight to his left foot, subconsciously aware that he did it to angle himself away from her as she approached.

It felt…wrong, somehow, to look at her this way. Though he couldn't place how the act of looking itself was different now than it had been before. Just because he was less oblivious didn't change anything, did it? He didn't know – not for sure. If anything, this only ratchetedan already very present anxiety into full on discomfort. Thank goodness she didn't appear to notice.

She was eyeing her shoes where they sat at the center of a growing puddle of mud. Mud that would likely take some hours to dry enough to be scraped away with any sort of efficacy. He could almost see the progression of thoughts play out upon her face as she calculated just how long it would take; the hesitation, clearly not wanting to touch them. Grudging acceptance followed, paired with another wince of dubious dislike.

She extended a single foot, toes pointed down toward the soiled shoes, and something about the image – about the idea of her dirtying her feet anew – was simply unacceptable.

Jason found himself moving in spite of himself, oddly helpless to fight his reach. His hand closed around her forearm, and yet while his grip was gentle he was excruciatingly aware of the similarity of it to a touch her brother had bestowed not an hour before – one which he had interpreted as forceful.

A muted sound of surprise left her, her other hand tightening reflexively upon the damp towel she still clutched. But in spite of this her eyes didn't go to his hand, neither in question or condemnation. They went straight to his masked face where they lingered as they might have upon the page of a book, understanding dawning. Her foot lowered back to the cement.

"You shouldn't have to carry me all the time…" The words had the cadence of a scold with none of the sting, and he caught the underlying threads of guilt within them alongside the reluctant submission. The words were more an expression of mood, not to be taken literally. Which was good. He had no way to tell her that even if it had been all the time – which it wasn't (which she knew) – he would do it anyway, and wouldn't have minded.

He could feel her pulse against his thumb where it rested at the tender skin of her inner wrist. A strong, steady rhythm of life as calming as she herself was so unsettling to him just now, though how it was possible to be both soothed and disturbed at the same time he was still at a loss.

Ever at a loss.

Her shoulders were hunched inward – faintly, but enough that he noticed. Was she still cold? Her skin was warm to the touch, but that didn't mean she didn't still feel the cool draft coming in through the open doorway. Worry creased the space between his brows. She needed to be somewhere warm, somewhere truly sheltered, away from the cold and the wet.

Releasing the grip at her wrist, he extended his arm, crooking his fingers slightly in the small, beckoning gesture he had come to use to indicate he intended to pick her up. Though he lacked the vocabulary to explain, he didn't like doing so without permission. It was different when she was actively struggling or in need, but she was neither now. If she was determined to walk, he would let her, but he would really rather she let him help. The weather had calmed somewhat, no longer fueled with wildness enough to be termed a storm, but the rain still fell which meant the condition of the ground would be no better.

She stepped forward, reaching for his shoulder as he leant to loop his arm beneath her legs and lift her from the floor.

As soon as he straightened he felt her twist against him, her elbow knocking awkwardly against his chest. For a moment he thought she was trying to get back down, yet when he angled his head to look, it was to find her extracting the towel she still held from where it had become trapped between them. Spreading it out with a flick, she leaned sideways, deeper into the bend of his shoulder, holding the towel aloft over their heads like a canopy. Or an umbrella.

It hadn't occurred to him how he was going to keep her dry. Had he been thinking with any kind of clarity he would have shucked his coat and had her use it. In fact, that was probably what he should have done now…but he didn't.

Normally he only used the one arm when he carried her, preferring to keep the other free in case he had call to use it. He would tuck his hand beneath the bend of her knees, her hip nestled against the inside of his elbow, her back and side resting against his chest and upper arm. Holding her this way allowed him the same freedom of mobility that folding her over a shoulder did, but without the discomfort he knew that must cause her. Now, however, he found his normally purposefully unoccupied right hand stealing up to rest against the lower slope of her waist, anchoring her there, wary of the way the task of holding up her makeshift rain-cover took away her ability to hold on to him. Short of something launching out of the brush at them, he would never have dropped her (and even then he was doubtful he wouldn't simply turn his body to shield her), but he couldn't be sure this inclination to precaution was guided purely by safety or by giving in to the craving to be even just a little bit closer.

Her face was so close to his. He could feel her breath against his ear, the faint brush of her damp hair against his neck where it slid beneath his collar. For the few steps it took him to reach the threshold leading back outside, she was all he could feel: breath and body and soft yellow cotton.

He had never been more aware of her – specifically the softness of her, her utter oppositeness from himself. The whole walk back it was all he could think about. How right she felt there, and how wrong he felt in contrast, bloodied and dirty and beastly. How much he wanted to be somehow…worthy of her, and having no idea how he would even begin to become so. He was so consumed with it that he had made it halfway to the house, driven by habit and muscle memory.

His steps slowed as the reality rose up around him, cresting like a wave. He couldn't take her back there. Even if it hadn't been left a mess and riddled anew with hazards, the tunnel – that cage he had forced her in – was no longer for her. He could not reward her choice to stay by returning her to a place that had begun as a prison. As for the house itself; the only space still sound enough to be usable was his childhood bedroom, and while feasible, something inexplicable inside him emphatically disliked the idea of putting her there.

If not the house…where should he take her? Where _could_ he take her?

The towel had been sodden for minutes now, its waterlogged fibers beginning to seep through in an unpleasantly cold and liquid hourglass. And perhaps it was due to this that he was able to make the decision he did so quickly, as fiercely as he loathed it – because the parts of him so tied now to her refused to allow even this small risk to her wellbeing.

He barely had to steel himself in order to turn and start down a path he had not traversed in too many years to count, hunching his body around hers as he quickened his pace through tree-cover that grew sparser the nearer they came to the building at the end of it.

The lodge was a sprawling, two-story building constructed to look like a farmhouse with stylish shutters at all the windows, now crooked and worse for wear, and a covered porch wrapping about the front and one side. Even when he had been a child and the camp functioning one, he'd never had much reason – and even less desire – to visit it. But he knew from observation that of all the buildings in the camp it was the least damaged by time and by his mother's efforts at sabotage. The walls and roof were sound, as was the insulation. There would be a warm, safe place for her to sleep. Better than any other he could provide.

Though the steps were sheltered by the roof, he carried her up the steps and all the way to the door before bending to lower her down, the cotton of her dress catching at a tear in his sleeve as she slid from his grasp with the ease of a whisper.

She didn't ask him why they were there instead of back at the house. She didn't ask if it was safe, and it gave him a rush of tender pride to know that she trusted him so implicitly. He watched closely as she tested the handle, cautiously prodded the door open with a mournful creak of derelict hinges. He watched her step into the darkened room beyond, nothing but the coiling stiffness of the muscles in his back giving away how strongly he disliked the sight of her walking into this place so outside his realm of comfort. He quashed it with effort, reminding himself firmly that while he might not belong here, _she_ did.

She turned about, squinting to make out the details of the darkened room in which she stood, and he made note to retrieve the lanterns from the tunnel for her. Her hand was a slender streak of white in the blackness as it reached out to find and trace the back of a piece of furniture, exploring what she could.

There was a tell-tale crackling groan of old vinyl when she sat, knees bending as she drew them up onto the couch she had discovered.

For a moment she just sat there, and for all he could see the exhaustion creeping swiftly up on her, she didn't seem to want to do what she should – lie down and sleep.

The couch was set perpendicular to the door, the back of it looming up behind her as her chin tipped up to look at him, almost as if in question.

Was it a request for permission? Direction? Was it a statement of discomfort?

Her hand rose, gripping the blanket that had been left tossed across the back of the couch and tugging it down, draping it across herself. She lay down, all but the very top of her head disappearing into the shelter of furniture, and something still knotted between his shoulder blades uncoiled.

Reaching, he gripped the edge of the door and pulled until it slowly closed. He turned, putting his back to the door and his gaze to the rain dripping in tiny cascades from the eaves of the porch.

The soap she used to wash had a faintly lemony scent; he could still smell it where she had touched his clothes. He knew were he to lift a hand to his mask and breathed in he would find it coating the surface of his palms. His stomach tightened, the fingers flexing to quash the powerful urge to slip the shield out of the way and press a hand to his face, to his nose and mouth, to close his eyes and remember the soft, curling texture of her hair, what it had felt like to have her tucked against him – not to carry, but just to hold there, as she turned to rest her cheek against his chest.

 _His._

He had thought it before, if only in a moment of extreme duress; and while he knew he had no right to the thought, no right to feel it, the word resonated in his brain with a ferocity that left him breathless. Maybe it was wrong; maybe it was selfish and bad, but he couldn't silence it. He didn't _want_ to.

He could feel the tension coiling rigid along his spine, and immediately shut it down, terrified of inadvertently triggering the awful, demanding need from before. Rolling his shoulders back and craning his neck until the joints crackled, he walked with stiff steps to the end of the porch as far from the door as he could get…and then he stood there, uncertain.

On some level he instinctively knew he should go, that distance would help. There was no need to stand guard over her now that she was no longer a prisoner. She was safe behind sturdy walls from any threat that might be lurking in the woods, which – he was confident now – would be only of the animal and weather-based variety. And yet he hesitated, not liking the idea of leaving her regardless of the logic.

Gradually, after far longer than he was comfortable taking note of, he descended the porch steps and walked to the edge of the trees.

He had not a single clue where he was going or why, or what he would do when he got there. The only thing he remained sure of was that everything had changed, and that he had no idea how to wrap his head around what came next.

* * *

 **NOTES:**

Oof, I'm sorry for the wait on this one. This was a combination of having a very clear picture of what I wanted but the words just not wanting to lay down for me, and real life getting in the way. In addition to being a writer I'm also a cosplayer/costumer and fall is busy season for me, plus I was hired for a full-time position at work – which will be good for my financial health but has also meant I have less reliable ad regular time to write because of the particular shifts I'm now working. I'm hoping that settles down a little bit here in the near future.

So anyway – did I mention this story is a slow burn? :D We're moving along though, which is DELIGHTFUL to write. I'm very much enjoying Jason drawing some conclusions about things, even if they're still full of confusion and question marks.

Now that I've reached the movie-climax part, everything feels kind of…not pointless, but not as plot-driven? Which is stupid, because this fic has always been more about the relationship and less about traditional plot structure. Just me and my insecurities. As long as I'm having fun writing it and you all are still enjoying it, IT'S FINE. I originally wanted to add more to the end of this chapter, but I honestly feel bad about the wait and just wanted to freaking update.

So here we are!

I want to thank everyone, as always, for reading and for following/favoriting – and to those of you who leave me comments, you literally brighten up my days and inspire me to knuckle down when I'm having off moments. Seriously. Thank you. I've gotten a little lax about replying to comments out of business and stress, but I'm going to make a concerted effort to be better on that starting now.

I love you all to bits!

Until next time.


	17. Hungry Eyes

**Chapter 17  
** Hungry Eyes

~/13/~

 _Too hot._

It was the first and closest thing to a thought she had; that the warmth was oppressive, smothering. Whitney shifted, kicking halfheartedly out with one leg, and was slapped upside the head by her second, far more coherent thought.

 _Christ on a Christmas tree, OUCH._

Her back screeched with the movement, and she quickly stopped, suddenly very awake and balancing a number of colorful curses on the tip of her tongue. She was sore, all right, just as she'd predicted. It was as if all the little pains she had gathered throughout the night had fused together and leeched outward until her entire fucking body had become a solid throb of pain. Fortunately, as she discovered upon gingerly testing an arm, it was just that – a dull throb. No sharp pulls or stabbing agony to indicate something torn or sprained or injured. Just a full-body Charley-horse. No big deal.

Exercising the cautious care of a woman many decades her senior she sat up, swinging her legs over the side of the couch that had absolutely been part of the problem. It creaked sadly as her weight distribution changed; a combination of old springs and imitation leather upholstery that time had not been kind to.

The couch itself was too short for someone with her height to stretch out, which had forced her to either remain curled up or to have her feet propped up on the arm of it – something she had been able to tolerate for no more than a few moments at a time. The metal bones of its frame had dug into her ribs and hips as she slept, the cracking vinyl scraping at her calves and knees so that her skin now sported a nice collection of long red. The only reason she had been able to sleep at all was with thanks to the soul-deep exhaustion that had swept the consciousness out from under her.

With a preemptive, drawn-out hiss of " _fuuuuck_ " and a grit of her teeth, she forced herself to arch her back, roll her shoulders, turn her head slowly and deliberately from side to side, all the while peering about at her new surroundings – far more now in the daylight then the rough ink-sketch it had been in the dark.

She was inside of what appeared to be some kind of multi-purpose building. The spacious main room in which she found herself was stuffed full of seating and tables and a wide hearth for gathering at. There was a whole wall dedicated to a towering bookcase and a set of shelves messily stocked with board games and clear tubs full of Legos and craft supplies and decks of cards. A butcher-paper mural had been taped to another, underneath an open-slat staircase leading up to the a second floor, festooned with a great big hand-painted statement of _Welcome Camp Crystal Lake Summer 1984_ , and how on earth it was still sticking rather than falling into a crumpled heap after so many years Whitney had no idea. It was very possible that it she were to so much as disturb the air too close to that half of the room it would do just that.

The entire interior from walls to floors to supports and ceiling was wood. Beautiful old hardwood, the kind now found only in tiny houses from the early 1900s or the homes of the exorbitantly wealthy. The hearth seated in the half-wall directly across from her couch was stone, tall and deep-set, topped with a thick slab of raw wood, complete with bark, to serve as a mantle. Clearly the owners had had money – enough to build and open a summer camp – and of course it had been the fifties, things had been different then. Money, not to mention the worth of things, had been different then. But still...she was impressed, suburban city girl that she was.

She didn't remember all the windows – windows that now stood out in beautiful glass clarity, sun streaming in through what seemed to be the entire back wall of the room with even more above, visible beyond the open banister closing off the second story overhead. Granted, it had been very late, very dark, and there had been no moon to provide the kind of light which might have illuminated them. She had been mostly blind. Blind, barefoot, and completely reliant on Jason.

Why hadn't he taken her back – to the house at least, if not the tunnel?

She remembered the way he had stopped mid-walk, pausing as though finding himself suddenly lost. It had only been for a moment before he had taken a sharp turn and set them on a detour she didn't recognize, ultimately bringing her here. She had been too tired to do much other than acquiesce, but now as she studied the solid wood paneling of the interior around her she considered the possible reasons.

He seemed to understand that they had reached a kind of paradigm shift; that what had been before lay now on the other side of a line they had irrevocably crossed. Going back was no longer an option. Whether or not he would have forced her back there if she'd left was inconsequential. She had chosen to stay. Which by very definition made her a prisoner no more. Was that why he'd brought her here – to somehow confirm that distinction? If that was true, then there would have been no point in telling him that she honestly wouldn't have minded going back, that the tunnel had become familiar or that her little bed nest was far more comfortable than this creaky, old-ass couch.

Tired as she had been, it hadn't escaped her notice that he went no further than the mat just outside the door. It had seemed that to enter would have been to perform a trespass of his own into a space that he rejected as beyond his territory. She wondered if he hadn't been trying somehow to put her back into the word he had snatched her from – the human world, as it were – as if to make amends for having done so. Not that he'd needed to.

Well...maybe _he_ had needed to.

She knew what it was to feel the need to apologize for something not entirely of her own doing, didn't she? Though his deeds were far more justifiable than hers had been. Funny how now she could look back on the kidnapping she had regarded as foul and cruel had become somehow sympathetic. Funny how things could alter one's perspective.

Then there was the way he'd carried her. She was used to him scooping her up by looping his arm just under her backside, so that no longer had much power to affect her beyond the now normal tingle of pleasant awareness at the contact as much as the flex of strength underneath her.

It must have been because she'd relinquished her normal grip at his shoulder in favor of holding her towel aloft above them to keep off most of the rain. Had he worried she might fall and moved to prevent it? She could think of no other reason why he would suddenly break the habit of weeks to use both hands otherwise. Not that she didn't appreciate the concern, but it wasn't what had made her breath shallow when she'd felt his palm cup the curve of her waist.

She could have told him not to, that she was fine. But she hadn't. And that hadn't been at _all_ self-serving.

 _Liar._

She tipped her chin back, peering up at the high beams strung across the triangular point of the ceiling, the light pouring through all the windows in pale golden sheets; so lovely and warm after such a miserable night. It was probably lovely a fresh-smelling outside now, after so much rain to clear away the stagnant state of the summer air. Inside, however, the air was so thick with dust that it nearly cast the illusion as to being filled with vapor.

Sure enough, as though by virtue of a countdown initiated the moment she'd stirred, the next inhale she took caught in a violent sneeze. Tight pain lanced along her back and she winced. It was…well, it wasn't the worst she'd ever had, but it wasn't awesome. And that was _after_ the hot shower and all the stretching she'd done.

She twisted where she sat, her eyes finding the door – now closed, though she had not left it that way. Jason's doing, apparently.

Where was he? She was fairly confident he wouldn't have gone after Clay. He had so clearly made a choice, and it had not been death. But had he stood guard outside all night fearing she might slip away in the night, or else as a vigilant sentinel against any outside harm? Had he gone back to the house, spent the night in the childhood bed far too small for his frame – alone? The thought bothered her. Not so much the house as much as the aloneness. It was an inexplicable dislike; it wasn't as if he hadn't spent countless nights in just such a fashion, but that had been before. If she was here then he was no longer alone...at least for as long as she stayed.

 _Three days._

That was what she'd said.

 _Three days, and I'll explain._

It had been an arbitrary number produced out of need, a promise made in desperate hope. It had produced the outcome she had wanted, and that had been enough in the moment. Now, though, she had to face the reality of making such a promise to one man, and the separate, conflicting statement she had made to another.

She had said she wasn't going anywhere. Then she had said she would go in three days. So which was it? Neither was a promise she could break, and neither could she keep without breaking the other. When the three days were up, what then? Would she go? And if she did go, what happened then? If she stayed, she risked Clay stirring up worse trouble, and if she didn't she risked breaking something precious. Which was the right path to take? Was it possible to satisfy both? She had no answers and no idea what she was going to do. There was nothing in her head but the faint buzz of a mild headache.

With a decisive inhale, Whitney closed her eyes. Shutting out the faint pang of the ache in her head. She didn't need to have an answer right now this second. She had three days – she'd figure it out. She would have to.

But for right now this second, the only task she was going to assign herself was getting up and looking outside.

Gingerly she got to her feet, straightening with a groan and stretching where she stood; generous moments spent bending and moving to encourage her body to make its peace with the idea of moving around. Though painful at first, it would do nothing but help her, and while she felt much older than she was, the hobbling hitch to her gait eased as she crossed the space between couch and entryway.

She gripped the knob, twisted, pulled the door open, and immediately aborted the step she had been about to take across the threshold to keep from trampling the array of objects arrayed upon the ancient be-flowered welcome mat like a small army lying in wait for her to attempt escape.

They spread out from the mat to encompass part of the porch: a tidy aurora of items. Her things from the tunnel were all there: blankets folded into neat, stacked squares, the pillow she'd used, her crate full of books, the pretty stones and other little knickknacks, the duffel full of clothes. Two battery lanterns and a flashlight. The bag of (sort of) food was there, along with additional offerings she hadn't seen before. Most of a box of granola bars, half a bunch of bananas, a single orange, an entire unopened flat of grocery-warehouse muffins – the kind so big they required two hands to hold. Her shoes were there, painstakingly scraped and brushed free of most of the mud. A task which would have taken the better part of an hour to reach quite such a state of almost-clean again.

And there was more; _more_ things scattered amongst these which her brain could not quite pick out apart from the fact that they were there, adding to the number of items purposefully left here for her to find, and to indicate that yes, this was to be her living space now while she remained here.

Had he been at this all night? Traveling back and forth between house and lodge – a not insignificant trek – in order to ferry all this here? Obviously he must have. Chances were he slept about as much as he ate, which meant not much and in small doses. Still, the idea of him spending his entire night hauling all these things to her (to say nothing of _cleaning_ her damn _shoes_ ) and all while fairly severely injured inspired both touched affection and a worry she couldn't stifle.

It occurred to her, as she surveyed the items laid out like so many sacred offerings, that he must not have feared that she would up and vanish, unbound and uncaged as she had been all throughout the night. And if he hadn't, it would have been because of two things. One, because he understood he could no longer serve as her keeper-jailer as he once had – which seemed only fortified by this act of presenting her with a space of her own. Two, because had he trusted her enough to keep her word, to stay.

It _galled_ her to feel so undeserving of that trust, the grain of self-disgust scratched and stuck like sand in the back of her throat. It was not a trust she would ever betray again. If she had to break every bone in her own body not to, so help her, she would. She would do it, and utter not a single complaint.

With a wince she lowered herself to the porch and reached for her shoes – abruptly pausing as she went to slip them on as she caught a flash of color inside the left one. Something nestled in the opening.

Reaching in, she extracted three tiny, sunny yellow buttercup blossoms.

Her heart gave a giddy little flip-flop at the sight of them before she promptly told said heart to knock it off. She knew what this particular heady mix of anxious almost-nausea and stupid, half-euphoric glee was, flooding her veins like anesthesia straight from an IV. It was worse now than it had been the first few times he'd brought her flowers, though they meant no more now than they had then. Yet the more he did it – and the more infatuated with him she became – the harder it was to hold on to that fact.

Cradling the flowers gently in an open hand, she slipped on the shoes and got clumsily back to her feet. Upon glancing around, it was clear that wherever Jason was, he wasn't waiting outside the house for her. Not that she should expect him to be...and not that she did, considering he might be in the midst of yet another trip to bring some other object to add to the array, or doing something else entirely, which was more likely to her mind. He had more and far better things to do than babysit her, that was for certain. And she had plenty to do herself, too; giving the lodge a thorough looking-over, making a list of things that needed cleaning, fixing, etcetera, and taking stock of things she might need.

It seemed logical to start by walking the perimeter of the building, so she did, stepping down from the porch steps all the while gritting her teeth against screeching legs and beginning to circle the building.

Her knowledge of architecture and structural integrity were basically nonexistent, but there were no obvious holes in the walls or broken windows, no obvious signs of rot or of rust, of encroaching tree roots or of fire damage, that she could see. There was what appeared to be a small attached shed at the east side, which housed gas line and fuses and a great old monster of a generator that, from the reek of the tiny space, ran on gasoline, and hinted at the building's age.

The foundation likely dated back to the fifties, possibly earlier, its skeleton dressed down and re-fortified, redesigned around, gutted and redecorated a number of times over the decades in order to look as though it had only been left sitting for a few years rather than what would have been closer to almost thirty. They had probably just been finished gussying it up again for the reopening in '84 only for any hope of the camp ever opening its doors again was spectacularly dashed by the massacre at the hands of Mrs. Voorhees. Whitney was positive there would have been significantly more damage otherwise. But as far as she could tell it seemed sound enough to be livable.

By the time she made it back around to the porch her body had begrudgingly accepted that it would, in fact, need to deal with being asked to generate movement, and it was becoming clear that the cold-break of the night before had passed. It wasn't quite as hot as it had been the weeks leading up to it, but they were still deep in the middle of August and Whitney was betting there would be more sweltering days before summer was over.

Tip-toeing carefully through the arrangement of objects she still couldn't quite bear to disturb further, she made her way back inside, eyeing the lazy drifts of dust that layered the warm beams of morning sun. A mental note was made to open up all the doors and windows she came across to initiate a thorough airing-out.

She wandered through the rec room she had spent the night in, crossing to the long bay of windows in search of latches or mechanisms and pleased to discover that they had been designed to prop open, swinging out on hinges from the top and staying open with the help of built-in metal pieces. Some of these were a bit warped from age, but each worked, and she happily went down the line until all six were wrestled open. She hoped that with help from the open door a nice cross-breeze might start to coax out the stale air and usher the fresh in.

Making her way through the open threshold beneath the stairs, she found herself in the kitchen.

It was an odd, hodgepodge of a room, neither large enough to be as high-capacity as the camp itself had seemed to be trying to make itself, nor small enough to be just for the staff and counselors. From the look of them the appliances hadn't been replaced since the early 80's, thought from the quick look-over she gave them the fridge and gas stove would probably be in working order were there power. She would have to ask Jason about the presence of fuel on the premises, if for nothing else then to power the stove. Although, push come to shove, she could cook during the fireplace. It would take some guessing, and some potentially dangerous (for her digestive system) learning, but she could figure it out.

When examining the sink – a deep, wide beast of hollow metal meant to handle a great many dishes at once – she noticed the cracks in the lower right corner of the window above it. A tight, circular spiderweb set in the glass reminiscent of what a fist might have made. Or perhaps an errant baseball. Though it was sound enough not to shatter when she propped it open.

She ran a palm along a counter, passing a water-stained drying rack and several large canning jars filled with dry pasta, rice, and beans, and a lone can of crappy coffee far too old now to be of any good. Yet she still found herself tempted by the idea of the everyday pleasure that was coffee. There was quite a bit of counter space, she noted, and there were plenty of both cooking and eating dishes stored away in the cupboards – ones she would wash before using, but still.

Then there was the wide, walk-in pantry; the kind lined with deep shelves suited to high-capacity storage. She peeked inside, squinting in attempt to penetrate the pressing dark of the little room. From what she could tell it was mostly empty, which made sense. And frankly whatever there might have been inside was more than likely significantly passed anything close to its prime.

It wasn't until she was closing the door again that she noticed the scuff marks there, and a fine chill danced its way up her spine. Shallow dents and gouges dappled the surface all around the knob outside as though someone had been trying to smash their way in. Jason had not been responsible for these. He would have simply yanked the flimsy door from its hinges, not slashing viciously at it with a blunt object. These were courtesy of his mother, and just as much a marker of the levels of her madness as her mourning. There had been no smell of blood or rot, and the door itself was still fully intact, which was enough evidence to reassure Whitney that no one had died in there, but she still found herself a little disturbed.

Gradually she wandered back out to the main room, craning her neck to look up at the great wooden beams supporting the angled ceiling and the rails of the second level **.** All of fourteen seconds were spent considering the stairs before she rejected the idea. Her body was doing relatively well considering the abuse of the night before, she didn't need to subject it to a full flight of stairs just yet. She needed to pace herself, and frankly, there was plenty to contend with on this flood alone: airing, washing, carrying in all the stuff from the porch. So that was what she was going to worry about.

She began by changing her clothes; swapping the admittedly quite comfortable dress for a too-large shirt and a pair of shorts which were moderately less cool, but better suited to housework. Plus, there was a tiny part of her that really just didn't want to damage or get it dirty. It was pretty, after all. Next she went about separating all the foodstuffs from the rest of the items to bring into the kitchen area, which would be in need of a wipe-down before she did anything resembling preparing to eat inside.

She was on her way back out to the porch when movement stirred at the corner of her periphery, and she glanced up to see Jason walking up the path they had taken to get there last night, a bag of some kind slung over one shoulder.

Soft pleasure uncoiled in her chest, something between eagerness and contentment. Immediately her course altered, her feet taking her across the porch to the railing where she braced her hands to wait for him. She caught herself smiling, genuinely happy to see him in the ways that had come to be familiar before the grinding mess of last night.

His head lifted slightly, no more than a fraction of an inch, but she knew it signaled that he in turn had seen her. His stride lengthened, and she was relieved to note the complete absence of a limp, or of any other sign of pain.

"Hey," she greeted as he climbed the shallow steps to the porch, the wood creaking softly beneath his weight even while his footfalls themselves were soundless.

He gave her a small nod in reply, the closest thing to a _hello_ she had ever received from him, and she found herself abruptly wordless. She didn't feel awkward, exactly...but for some reason she was utterly at a loss as to what to say to him after, well, everything. Rather desperately she wanted to ask how he was – a question he would have no way to answer, and which seemed so futilely, pointlessly inadequate inside her own head.

"Were you out here all night?"

It didn't quite convey what all she wanted it to, but she supposed it would have to do.

Another nod, broader, more definitive – answer rather than acknowledgement. With his two-finger point he indicated the path and the way he'd come, then the array of items he'd left outside the door, as if she'd needed an explanation of what exactly he'd been doing all that time.

"I saw," she agreed, "thank you." She pointed down to her feet, to the shoes enveloping them. "Especially for these."

She saw his eyes drop, alighting first on the shoes, and then lower almost bashfully to the planks beneath his feet.

"You didn't have to do this," she said softly, "I could have done it today."

His great shoulder rose and lowered in a half-shrug, hand making a hapless kind of gesture that she interpreted as waving off her statement by virtue of the fact that he didn't really sleep, and it had been something to do and needed doing, and was no trouble. And so forth. Fondness spread warm as a blush through her. He really was just a sweet man underneath all that fearsome exterior – though no longer so fearsome to her now. He simply seemed to want to be helpful, or quite possibly found himself fighting off a sense of listless uncertainty now that his comfortable routines had yet again been flipped upside down. And that was certainly something she could relate to.

"Well, you definitely did _not_ have to clean my shoes."

He shrugged again, as if to say it was no trouble, which it absolutely would have been. But she let it go.

"Come here and let me look at your shoulder."

It was not a request, and while Jason was really far too large for her to bully into doing anything he didn't want to, he obeyed all the same. Lowering the canvas bag he carried to the floor he moved closer. Whitney rose up on her toes, reaching for his jacket collar.

"If you could take this off, that would help," she muttered as she struggled with the torn layer of fabric.

The remark had been more an empty gripe than anything else. She had certainly not expected him to actually do it, and when he did, shrugging out of the coat to clutch it in the opposite hand, she was too stunned to do anything but blink and go with it.

There were two new holes in his shirt, the aged beige fabric stained newly dark around them. Yet it was not, she realized upon grazing the cloth, stiff with the blood that had made these stains. He must have rinsed it, then, possibly while seeing to the wounds underneath. She was careful of any potential bandaging as she plucked at the torn cloth and eased it up to peer underneath, not wanting to disturb it unless she had to. Except there was nothing to disturb. No bandages. No wounds.

Whitney frowned, instantly and thoroughly befuddled. There had been cuts – she would have sworn on her own grave. One directly to the trapezius, another encroaching lower toward the pectoral. She had seen the dark glisten of sluggish bleeding, had fretted about the potential need for sutures. The slashes in the shirt had not been there before, nor had the obvious bloodstains...so where were the injuries that had caused them?

Pushing away, she hunkered down, snatching at the hole in his trousers above the left knee, only vaguely aware of his jerking start when she did. Gingerly she felt around for the puncture she remembered, sliding her hand around to skim the back of his thigh for an exit wound, and finding none. No bandaging here, either. There was nothing but torn pants and undamaged skin underneath; warm and smooth, the flesh it housed solid and whole. Stunned, she sat back on her heels, staring intently at the tear in the sturdy workman's cloth and trying to understand what she was both seeing and _not_ seeing.

"But you were hurt," she said faintly, tipping her head back to look at the masked face peering owlishly down at her. "Weren't you? Or have I completely lost it?"

Something like fond amusement flickered in his eyes when he nodded once, and then shook his head. Yes to the first, no to the second.

"So, then—what, they just healed overnight? That's not..."

He was nodding again, lifting the no longer injured shoulder in another bemused half-shrug as if to say: _I know, I don't understand either._

Well, that was...different.

She had mused to herself once or twice about whether he was some weirdly corporeal ghost, or a zombie, but those had just been silly, idle thoughts. She had never seriously considered there might actually be something not quite natural going on. Had she?

...or _had_ she?

He didn't eat, didn't sleep. And when he'd affirmed that he had drowned, that he had died, she had assumed he meant that he'd stopped breathing, lost consciousness, that he'd been clinically dead for a few seconds. She had assumed he was referring to a near-death experience lasting no more than a moment or two. But she also remembered wondering how it was possible that he could have been alive for the time it had taken his mother to work up to her vengeful rampage without Pamela ever realizing her son was right there. Madness, she had thought, grief. Or, he truly had died; lost to the water that had claimed him until something had called him back.

Whitney Miller didn't so much pride herself on being a perfectly rational person as she did accept it as truth. A truth she might have been questioning with real concern just then had it not been for the other undeniable truth that she'd washed his blood from her fingers the night before, and the sources of that blood no longer existed. The perfectly rational explanation was that she did not have all the answers of the universe.

And frankly, that was all she was capable of processing of that subject.

"I mean...so long as you're ok, I guess," she murmured, unsure what else to say.

Jason's exhale left him with the cadence of a laugh. A hand appeared in front of her, palm up, and almost without thinking she laid her own inside it. Gently he pulled, and she didn't even feel the whine of her hamstrings as he helped her stand.

"I was just moving everything inside," she said, gesturing to the items at their feet, "and I was thinking I might take a look around the other cabins today, see if there's anything worth salvaging. Batteries for the lanterns, maybe candles, more blankets. Things like that."

He touched her arm, a graze of fingertips asking for her attention, which she gave. Pointedly he shook his head, and while she had become rather adept at guessing, this wasn't a head shake she could gather the meaning of.

"No, what?" she asked, recalling the things she'd just said in order to repeat them, find the one he objected to. "Moving things?" No response. "The cabins?"

There was the head shake again, firm and unrelenting. The kind of head shake that meant business. Yet she could think of no reason he would object so strongly to the idea...until she remembered the glass strewn in still glittering shards upon the ground as he directed her around the perimeter of disaster. That was why. The damage done to the cabins must have left them unsound to the point of being dangerous.

"No looking in the cabins. Got it. Is there somewhere else I could look, then?"

He seemed to be hesitating, with head very slightly tilted as if in thought.

"It's not super important," she felt the need to add, "I'll be fine either way..." She promptly shut up when Jason took a step back toward the porch steps, beckoning her to follow.

He waited for her at the bottom of the steps, apparently not content to simply lead her, and Whitney allowed herself a moment of appreciation for the obvious shift in how their relationship now functioned; whether because it was no longer necessary that one of them precede the other, or simply because he had decided he preferred it this way. Either way, she liked it – this new sense of camaraderie. It wasn't as if there had been none before, but what was there had been tainted by the unspoken absence of choice. Now, though, with both choice and freedom firmly established, she might be able to think of them truly as the friends she rather imagined they were.

Side by side they walked down the path, the dense trees opening up as they entered the camp proper. She studied the cabins as they passed. Every one of them exhibited signs of fire damage. Charred siding, crumbling eaves and corners, soot-streaked metal window-frames, and glass warped and curdled by heat until it looked as though a layer of water had been trapped within, all bubbles and froth; scorched by a mourning rage determined to make them uninhabitable for the rest of time.

Jason's touch skimmed her elbow, drawing her to watch as he pointed to a cabin off to the left which he followed up with a quick series of gestures she couldn't quite interpret.

"Sorry, what was that?"

Ever patient, he repeated as asked, slowing the gestures down. He pointed first to one cabin, then another, after which he spread his hands apart as though rifling through something – not unlike she did with her laundry basket in search of a shirt she might be able to get away with wearing one more time before washing – after which he mimed the action of hefting something into his arms.

She had him repeat the sequence once more before she was able to put together that he had already searched the cabins. She also gathered, purely from intuition rather than directly asking, that he had done so quite a long time ago, that it might possibly have been one of the first things he'd done, being under the assumption that he would need whatever supplies he could scrounge to survive. Until that had been proven wrong. Whatever might have been of use he had removed, and the rest was left to molder.

It was after this exchange that she recalled the tunnels beneath the house; tunnels crammed with what had seemed like a hoarder's collection of useless junk to a mind seeing without context.

After a while she had come to assume the accumulation of stuff was because he was tucking it all out of sight, leaving no trace of the many trespassers he had dispatched for anyone searching to find. She was still less than sure what he did with the bodies, but the objects hikers and campers tended to carry with them seemed to be exactly the kind of things she remembered seeing stuffed and piled into tight niches like strange detritus – and exactly the kind of things she had been hoping to recover. Plus, whatever he had salvaged was probably in far better shape being stored safe in the weather-protected and relatively temperature-controlled underground than they would have left in crumbling cabins.

Jason's stride faltered when the house's rickety silhouette came into view. He might have said nothing, but the emotion he gave off was palpable; a worry laced so sharply with regret that she could almost taste the tang of it, and she didn't need words to tell her why.

In his mind the house was no longer a place for her; neither one in which she belonged nor one he expected her to wish to go, and in his mind asking her to go inside was tantamount to putting her back in chains. A bit dramatic, perhaps, but she couldn't say she didn't understand why he would think it. She was even grateful for it, since it proved that he was sensitive to the wrong he had done her. He had always been human – human enough for rage, human enough for sorrow and loss and care and thousands of other things – but it had never really been clear to Whitney how much of right and wrong he retained from an incomplete childhood, abstract, murky things they were. It was possible he had learned simply through her telling him so, and if that was the case it was because he was human enough to do so.

He _had_ done her wrong, and a great wrong at that. But understanding and empathy had gone a long way toward mending those cracks, and his clear reluctance to steer her now to the place he had once caged her did the rest.

With a deliberate calm she moved forward, her stride measured as her feet carried her to the sad old house. The tired groan of the two shallow steps up to the door were like the starting notes of a familiar song played on an out-of-key piano, and she laid light fingertips against the frame from which the battered screen hung in a brief, silent kind of greeting before turning to look back over her shoulder for Jason, still standing in the grass- and weed-ridden gravel, watching her oddly.

"Are you coming?"

~/~

He had wanted to be helpful.

In the moment he'd simply thought that he knew where to find the kinds of things she mentioned looking for: batteries and blankets and the like. Then the house had come into view and everything flooded back to him.

The fear she would think he was somehow trying to trap her, or else force her back into the same cage even if not to keep her there, had been crippling. He no longer wanted her to associate him with bondage, with chains and discomfort and death, and the house could be nothing _but_ those things to her – to say nothing of the tunnels beneath. Yet now as he followed Whitney's slender shape down the hallway of his mother's house, it was evident that he needn't have worried.

He stood by his decision to relocate her to the lodge. It still felt right to give her a space that was purely hers, untainted by the bad things of before. Untainted by almost everything, if he remembered rightly. And it was a decision she seemed to agree with, or at lease accept, since when he'd arrived from his last trip had been to find her awake and sorting through the things he'd spent the dark hours relocating there. Yet it was still good to know that she didn't seem to revile the house he'd locked her beneath. Or, rather, he supposed it was more himself that he was glad she didn't revile. Not that he wouldn't have understood if she had, but he knew now as he had not before just how deeply it would wound him were she to ever look at him again the way she once had – with revulsion the only thing more powerful than her fear.

She stopped at the edge of the open trapdoor; and while with hands unbound she could have safely sat, swung her legs over and dropped to the tunnel mouth below, she didn't. She waited, reaching for him in clear request for him to lift her down. And he knew it was only because that was what was familiar to her, what would happen here, but knowing it had done nothing to stop the twist of yearning as he lowered her into the tight space below.

He experienced yet another keen stab of nervous unease when she hesitated at the end of the sloping path, certain the sight of the cavernous chamber that had served her as a living space for the better part of a month and a half had triggered something unpleasant for her. When she turned to look at him it was with her lower lip caught between her teeth and a small furrow between her brows, but the question that left her was light.

"Should I just…?"

The tight coil in his chest released on a silent sigh. She was concerned with rudeness, of all things, of being intrusive. Not bad memories. He made a broad, sweeping gesture with an open hand, hoping she understood that she should feel free to explore, and to take, as she wished.

She'd said he hadn't needed to bring her books and things to her, and he knew she had meant it. But what she hadn't understood was that he _had_ needed to. Bringing the things that had become hers to the place that would now be was the very literal least of what he could do to begin to atone for everything he'd done. As was giving her free reign here. After all, he had little use for the veritable millions of odds and ends stored in the nooks and crevices of rock and earth, and if even a fraction could be of use to her then he was glad for it.

Clearly uncertain, Whitney began to wander through the open room, almost immediately gravitating toward her corner.

The mattress and the overturned table-crate were all that remained now, everything else already relocated to the lodge. Yet she still paused there, crouching, reaching for something nestled in the dirt. When she lifted her hand it was with a piece of green glass was held carefully between two fingers, and he recognized the flat bottom of the little bottle she had liked to keep flowers in. Shattered in whatever struggle had taken place, he assumed. Perhaps in the midst of removing the manacles.

Manacles which, broken beyond his ability to repair, he had removed from the room, no longer wanting to look at them.

With a sigh, she returned the glass to the dirt, and he realized the tiny frown creasing between her brows when she stood was one of regret. She lamented the loss. He decided right then that he would find her another. He would bring her a thousand pretty bottles if it would smooth away that frown.

After a moment she gravitated to the other side of the room, passing the workbench to the cluttered shelves beyond. She was hesitant to touch anything at first, often recoiling mid-reach and leaving him to pick up and offer the various objects to her. But gradually she grew more comfortable, and soon he found himself trailing behind her with a crate to carry her selections.

He didn't lead so much as guide her along. When she approached the opening of the leftmost branching tunnel – the one which ended in a heavy metal door and carnage beyond – he steered her gently away. If she strayed too close to a weak bit of floor or a precarious pile of objects, he drew her attention to it or nudged her around. If she noticed, she didn't say; just continued on, following his silent direction toward the better collections of useable goods.

It had occurred to Jason once or twice during the early hours before dawn that he should have been dealing with the bodies he had left scattered in the wake of the evening's rampage. It occurred to him again now as he glanced over Whitney's shoulder down the earthen path, recalling the brown-haired girl he had left at the end of a different tunnel, split through the ribs and crumpled, now long-cold. He didn't normally delay his cleanup for so long. To do so had always seemed risky, and he supposed it was riskier now than it had been before. But just as it had this morning, the risk seemed so much less important than this – than seeing to the living, breathing girl currently clutching a rolled-up sleeping bag to her chest, bright and beautiful even in the wash of harsh, yellow light.

She turned, hugging her prize, and the way she looked at him, the quick, bright flash of her smile, set the heart in his chest to hammering in a way that was still so odd to feel. He didn't anyone had ever looked at him that way: simply happy to see him, to be with him. Just as he was.

The dead could wait. They would wait as long as they must, for he had another calling now.

By the time she declared herself satisfied, they had filled three crates and a fraying wicker basket with supplies, and Whitney appeared pleased, if tired.

He had noticed it only in passing before, but now he was sure. There was a faint hitch to her movement, a subtle stiffness in her steps, every time she bent or twisted. Not quite gingerly, not quite with pain, but bordering on it. The unmistakable strain of overworked muscles. She'd put herself through a grueling ordeal to protect her brother – had nearly broken herself in the effort. He admired the dedication it had taken even as he hoped she never found herself in a place where she must do so again.

He knew better than to press her about it, for all the protective force inside him fretted. She understood her limitations to a degree he would never have, knew what would help and what would hinder. It wasn't his place to question. Throughout her excavation of the tunnel maze she had been content to go easy, allowing him to lift and carry for her, and as he went about the task of moving everything up through the trapdoor she elected to rest, seated on the workbench stool. He was not blind to the faint cast of guilt as she watched, but was pleased that she offered no protest. He would do whatever was required, be whatever she needed. He would be the blunt instrument. He would bleed. For her. And he would be glad to do it.

On his second trip back down to the chamber he found her relocated to the floor, cradling a rat in her palm as several others milled about her; hoping, no doubt, for some kind of edible reward for their affection. Persistent little beggars. And yet she stroked and cooed to them as though they were puppies, not the unwanted vermin his mother had worked diligently to purge from the house.

"I'll come visit," he heard her murmur, and paused as he bent to lift the last of the crates, "I'll bring plenty of treats. Don't worry."

An indescribable tenderness spread through him, like the warmth that radiated outward from a sip of hot liquid. She knew perfectly well he would continue to feed them, just as he had well before her arrival. But she said it because it was something she wanted to do for her own sake, not out of any concern for the wellbeing of the hoard of now irreversibly spoiled rodents. He hadn't been aware just how much he cared for the little beasts until she had begun showing them so much of her own affection, and the odd feelings of ownership seeing her with them now stirred were as unexpected as they were pleasant.

Gently she nudged them along, hauling herself to her feet with the first real admission she had given of her less-than-peak physical state – a shallow groan.

"Oof. Gotta keep moving," she muttered to herself, but he made note of it, glad that the only thing left to carry was the basket laden with candles and rolls of plastic wrap and other light, small objects.

It took two trips to get everything to the lodge. Well, one for her, toting the basket. Due to his size he was able to manage two of the crates at once with ease, which left only one behind and thus no reason for her to go back again. Not that it stopped her from being active for the scant minutes he was gone. Far from it.

Intent on spending the rest of the day gutting and cleaning the entire ground floor of the lodge, Whitney was a human-shaped flurry of motion; occupied with so many tasks that she routinely interrupted herself in the midst of one to begin or carry on with another as though there were simply too much to do to keep it all straight.

If she thought it odd that he lingered, that he trailed her when she ventured to the bathroom structure for her muddy clothes, or that he lurked outside like a shadow while she swept floors and washed towels and linens, she said nothing about it. If she objected to his inserting himself into her business to help her rig the clotheslines she had wrestled with, struggling to remember which of the knots he'd taught her were right to secure twine around the trunks of trees, she didn't so much as hint it. She did, however, smile. And often.

He never followed farther than the porch – and even this pressed uncomfortably close to feeling out of bounds – but even when she couldn't see him, she would often talk to him. It was only simple, idle talk, pieces he couldn't have recalled afterwards, but just the fact that she did it was enough for him to hope she enjoyed the company.

In truth it simply never occurred to him to leave. Even with the list of things he should do growing steadily longer in the back of his mind he could never quite bring himself to go. He was content enough to deem it the compulsion he felt to be near in case she had any need of him, in whatever form it may come, but were he to look deeper down he knew he would find a tangle of fear and confusion and hollow yearning that he could not yet bear to touch.

So he stayed, watching her relocate stacks of books inside, exchange heat-dried linens for freshly washed ones, hang cloths over windows with a hammer and nails and regretful winces. He listened to her curse her way through figuring out how to work the camp stove excavated from the tunnels, and to her screech of surprised glee upon finding an old radio – the music from which, while not unpleasant, was vastly improved upon in the moments she elected to sing along. And as the day passed and the encroaching night began to deepen, he found himself leaning against the porch railing just outside the open kitchen door, bathed in the spill of lantern and candlelight, watching Whitney dance around to the song that had just begun to play.

There was something vaguely familiar about the music, as though he had heard it once before a long, long time ago. But it was far more entertaining to focus on the girl singing with enthusiastic volume into the wooden spoon clutched in her hand than to a potentially unpleasant sliver of the past.

" _Nothing can be_ sadder _than a glass of wine alone_ —"

She spun, twirling giddily on bare feet upon a freshly mopped floor. Her hips rocking from side to side to the rhythm as she pranced about the kitchen, shoulders hunching forward, then rolling back with the arc of her back, and the pure joy in it was infectious. He could feel the corners of his own mouth twitch upward as she spun again, hair whipping wild about her face and one arm arcing gracefully above her head.

Her eyes found him, sparkling as though inset with stars, her cheeks flushed. She grinned, the smile as bright as a child's.

Tossing the spoon lightly to the drying rack from which she'd snatched it in her music-induced jubilance, she crossed the floor, an extra bounce to her steps as she made her way out onto the porch.

His head tilted as she approached, still swaying to the melody, regarding her with both amusement and curiosity. She reached for him, slim fingers folding about his wrist and gently tugging. Surrendering to her silent request he moved away from the porch, which pleased her – which in turn pleased him – and allowed her grip to trail down the inside of his wrist to softly grasp his hand.

He did little more than stand still while she moved, his arm joints loosening so she could continue to weave and twist upon the balls of her feet while holding onto him. It was unclear whether she expected him to mimic her or whether she was happy with this, but she had sought to include him, and that was enough to make up for any puzzlement he might have entertained about the matter. She seemed happy enough, her smile fluid as she sang softly along with the lyrics. And he had to admit that it was rather nice.

After a moment she lifted their joined arms, ducking gracefully underneath the arch she had made. She twirled, delicate steps taking her as far as extended elbows would allow before she spun back and into him, her shoulder nestling softly against his ribs as she folded his arm around her.

Her fingers tightening ever so slightly around his own, and he couldn't have said why it struck him only then and not before – not the instant she had made to touch him.

Her hands; small and soft and clean. His own…filthy, and from far more than simply the dirt and grease from the day's work. More than the events of the night before. It shouldn't have mattered. He had touched her before now with the same hands, no more or less dirty than they were now. And yet it did.

It _did_.

Without thinking he snatched his hand from her, sharply, as though she had burned him, and he regretted it the second she turned to him, startled, the guileless joy slipping from her face.

"What's wrong?"

Jason didn't know how to answer her. How did he relay something so simple, and yet so…intrinsically not? Hating the traces of hurt beginning to form around her eyes and mouth and not knowing what else to do, he held out his hands, showing her the grime of years etched in the creases of his palms, the stains of awful deeds.

She didn't see it.

Her frown deepened. "You didn't hurt me," she said, clearly confused as to how he could think it, and frustration caused his fingers to curl, nails biting into flesh.

He wheeled from her, eyes darting, landing on the trim of the door – decidedly less white than when it had been fresh-painted, but white enough. He pressed his hand there, gripping tightly enough for tiny chips of paint to flake away, and when he removed it the dark smudge left in imprint was both vindication and disappointment. If one could be disappointed by something known to be present.

She looked at the mark, and he imagined he could see her eyes following the individual streaks left by fingers. Then she glanced back to him, uncertain. "Your…" Another glance to the trim. "Your hands are dirty?"

His chin lowered to form a nod, relieved that she had put it together and hoping it would erase the leftover traces of hurt he could still see. Relieved and, if he were honest, ashamed. But that was all right. He could take the dawning displeasure as she realized he had dirtied her skin so long as she no longer looked at him as though he'd slapped her.

Yet the displeasure – the disgust – he braced for did not come.

Her frown eased, flowed smoothly into a soft understanding that nearly knocked the breath from him. "Well that's an easy fix," she said gently. "Come on."

He didn't comprehend at first; not when she padded to the door, crossing the threshold as easily as breathing, not when she turned to find him over her shoulder and repeat the invitation she had just given.

His step back was born of reflex. He wasn't proud of it, but nor was he entirely shamed by it. For all that he might want to obey, he knew his place and it was not there, not inside these walls, beneath this roof.

Whitney, it seemed, did not agree.

The understanding was still there, somehow even softer now, sending a shock of weakness down his spine, for it looked like _love._ Though it was not.

"This place is on your land," she told him, no pressure in her voice, no annoyance. Only truth as she saw it. "That makes it yours."

She _did_ understand, somehow, by some meld of cleverness and wisdom and simple care. So she would understand that he could not cross this last line, could not swallow the repulsion of what had become learned instinct. She would leave him to the night sky and open air, to his filthy hands and sour memories.

But if he believed that, it would only have been because he didn't know her…and yet he did.

"Or maybe it's mine now," she amended thoughtfully, dark brows curving slightly at the idea as she studied him.

It _was_ hers, and not because he had somehow gifted it to her when he had not seen it as his to give. She had earned it through labor, paid in sweat and effort and song. If she claimed it now, the laws of nature would acquiesce.

"It is mine, then. And I say you're welcome here."

She held out her hand to him, the _please_ unspoken but somehow all the louder for it.

"Come on," she coaxed, and he felt himself folding, felt the resistance crumbling alongside the rigid structure of the line he could no longer clearly see.

He did not move to place his hand in hers, yet he found it there all the same. A moment more spent upon tense, bated breath he hovered on the edge, the toes of his boots grazing the metal track of the door. She had turned to face him, her own toes – bare, so delicate and small – directly across from his, just for an instant. Until her right foot lifted, slid back. Until she stepped. And he, drawn by the force she was – greater even, it seemed, than gravity – followed.

She led him to the sink, moving slowly, as though leading a wary stray to food (a not completely inaccurate likeness) towing him patiently along until she was right up against the counter. The sink itself was quite deep, as if an entire laundry tub had been set there, and he remembered her exclaiming how much she appreciated the size of it. At least six times. She did not do so again, though a part of him wished she would, if only to ease the remnants of discomfort with the honey of her voice. There was no sound at all but for the notes floating from the little radio atop the refrigerator and the muted slosh of water from the faucet.

He stood just behind her, precisely where she'd led him, waiting in tense stillness as she tested temperature and fussed with something that clattered quietly. When she reached back, it startled him. He had expected her to present a bar of soap and set him to scrubbing. Instead she gripped him by the wrists, pulling his arms forward; forcing him to step closer or else topple into her, forcing his arms to curve around her, to frame her in.

Warm water met his skin, drawing a flinch that was purely surprise. Touch followed: fingertips skimming over his knuckles to push his sleeves farther up his forearms and then back down, turning his palms up, smoothing soap there. Without him even noticing, the strict binds of unbelonging loosened and fell away.

He was…mesmerized.

It was the sensation of her hands on his: rubbing soft circles into his palms, stroking methodically down the length of each finger, scouring gently at his nails with a tiny brush. It was the nearness of her, slight and slender between his arms, the way she occasionally tugged him forward by another fraction of an inch to better see to her work. It was the way she stood with her head tipped down, hair pulled sideways so that the nape of her neck was exposed, pale and long and slender. The way the wide collar of her shirt gaped, slipped down to bare one shoulder.

It was the smell of her. So faint at first, just a wafting hint of it slipping through the perforation of his mask like a brief taste of something sweet – and he would have sworn that he could isolate her within a mass of people just from the way she smelled. New-grass freshness, honey, the salt of skin.

An almost compulsive urge overtook him. To lower his head, to curve around her until he could bury his shielded face in her hair and take a proper, deep inhale. He seized it and clamped down, working to shove it back into the safe, tightly-locked recesses of his mind. He was so focused on suppressing that when he heard the sharp breath he almost thought it his own. Yet it couldn't have been. It wasn't at all the kind of long, savoring breath he had imagined taking; but short and harsh, more startled than relishing. Higher in pitch by far than anything his lungs could have produced.

The thing he registered before any other was that Whitney had gone abruptly still; her hands all of a sudden motionless where they gripped his own, the slim length of her wound tight as a coil of wire where it pressed flush against him...

The rest collided in a rush of shock, confusion, and horror.

He didn't know when he had done it – _how_ he had done it – but somehow in his war with the impulse to lower his head, he had moved forward. Enough to close the buffer of space that had remained between them. He hadn't meant to. If anything, he had been working quite hard to do the utter opposite. Yet now he held her pinned, trapped between the sink and the front of his own body, and he could feel every dip and curve of her from the narrow blades of her shoulders to the sweep of her back down to the lush swell of her backside. From chest to belly to thighs, all he could feel was her: the softness of her, the heat of her bleeding straight through his clothes and into his skin, and he stood no better chance of fighting it than he did a kick to the head.

He had never put his coat back on; hadn't felt the need to. It was still where he'd left it hours ago, draped over the porch railing, which meant it was that much easier to feel her, or the heat to catch in his veins and spread like fire across a spill of gasoline. He felt it in his limbs, licking at the inside of his chest, his throat, and the ache which swiftly followed was so sharp that it might have buckled his knees had they not locked a split second before.

Her fingers flexed, a short, tight spasm against his wrists, and the swift downward pitch of his stomach told him long before his brain that she had felt the stiffening of the flesh at his groin – and that she needed no time to decode what it meant. _She_ knew.

She _knew._

He could see the pale oval of her face reflected clearly in the dark glass of the unveiled window in front of them. She was no longer looking down at his hands but up at his reflection, shock and revelation and a gleam of the all-too-familiar thing so close to fear in her wide eyes, and his throat was closing in on itself, positive beyond doubt that whatever it was he was doing – had done – was wrong in every single way it could be wrong.

~/~

If asked, Whitney would only have been able to recall the feeling of comfortable fulfillment. She had been working gently at his hands, the warm vibrato of Stevie Nicks playing in the background, enjoying the rasp of the calluses lining his fingers.

He did have such nice hands, she had thought for what felt like the hundredth time; with their broad palms and long, dexterous fingers. A bit dirty, true – sanitation had definitely not been one of his top concerns, but even still. Why the layers of dirt had bothered him so fiercely and out of the blue, she wasn't sure. But it had been something she had the power and means to help with. That he had allowed her to coax him inside to do so was reward in of itself, as was the sweet sense of closeness.

If asked, she wasn't sure she could pinpoint when exactly everything had changed. She just remembered suddenly being keenly aware of him as she had not been a second before: the incredible heat of him at her back, every place he touched her. It was at that point she realized that he was _right there_ , the wall of his chest pressing into her shoulder blades, broad thighs tight against her backside. The edge of the counter was biting into her stomach, but she hadn't felt it. All she had felt was him, all raw strength and power and…

She stiffened.

She was no virgin, naïve or otherwise, she knew what a man's arousal felt like. But that didn't stop the shock from snapping in her brain like a burst vessel, because that was _not_ be…it _could_ not…

But it was. _He_ was. She could feel him, just against the small of her back, hard beneath thick cloth in a way that was in no way subtle.

Her chin jerked up, her eyes flying to the window not yet bestowed with a makeshift curtain – the glass bare and dark and allowing her to meet his eyes perfectly through the reflection, allowing her to see the horror, the _mortification_ there.

His inhale was sharp, preparatory. He was going to flee, going to hurl himself away from her, and if she let him he would fold himself in fear and shame and…

She moved purely on instinct, clutching at his hands and holding fast.

"Wait—" she blurted, feeling his flinch through her grip on him, through the tendons standing out tight and strained along the backs of his hands. She gentled her voice, tamping down the shock that had emerged harsher than intended. "It's all right. You didn't do anything wrong."

She tipped sideways into stilted silence, words stolen by her own brain's valiant effort to process.

Where on earth had this come from? All this time while she had been just short of losing her mind there had beenno sign that he noticed, no sign that he understood. She had been so _sure_ , and now, out of absolutely nowhere...

His hand slipped free of her grasp, leaving a damp streak as it slid across her ribs to curve with the shape of her waist, bracing as if in preparation to push away. A tremor chased down the length of her spine, and she felt her breath hitch on an inhale, stilling instantly when the movement nudged her ass into the unmistakable bulge beneath his trousers. Yet again she found herself shocked by it, by the insistent hardness of it.

He didn't shy back at the contact, though she caught the sudden cording of tendon in his neck to indicate the gritted teeth, the effort it cost him not to. The tension in him was like the uneasy, unwilling flex of bone before it snapped, and she knew that if she moved but an inch more, he would bolt.

Suddenly her mind caught at a shred of memory; another time when she had felt his palm against her side. The curl of his arm around her, pulling her into the shelter of his own shape as he angled his head to stare her brother down with a deadly meld of warning and threat. The way she had fleetingly thought it almost possessive, as though he weren't merely shielding her but attempting to send a message.

 _Oh._

He hadn't known they were siblings at the time. He had simply seen some other man with their hands on her – another _man_ , specifically. She wasn't sure he had even realized why he felt the need to respond the way he had. What was clear now was that something in him, buried so deep that it had taken the thought of her being stolen away from him to reach it, had recognized a very specific threat to something he considered his and had protested. Loudly. He might not have made a sound, but everything about him from bristling posture to the ember-hot warning in his stare had been as concussive as a snarl.

He had been staking a claim on a mate without even realizing it, without even knowing what he was doing.

 _Holy_ fucking _hell._

No…this had not come out of nowhere. She didn't know just for how long it had been there, but it had. And she had been completely blind.

Her exhale was thin and trembling, as were her words when she made another attempt to soothe. "It's all right," she repeated, though she could tell he didn't really believe her, and not just because the wary tension at her back did not relax.

It was fair to say that her ability to be reassuring was somewhat compromised.

"It's completely normal, it doesn't even mean..."

But it _did. He_ did. He was looking at her the same way she was likely looking at him. Wanting, but afraid to say it. Afraid to so much as breathe in case to want ruined everything.

Suddenly the comprehension that had always been absent before was there; a sharp, flailing battleground of awe and terror and desire that the thirteen-year-old girl she had once been recognized all too deeply.

Sympathy unfolded, tender and gentle.

Poor man. She had taken his ignorance for granted. It hadn't occurred to her that his regard for her could – let alone _would_ – evolve the way hers had. Which had been excruciatingly naïve of her.

She had been the first person to spend any real time with him, to know him, treat him with any manner of kindness. This outcome had always been possible, had been perhaps even inevitable after a certain point. He was not a child, nor was he what others might have deemed him: a child in a man's body. He was simply…innocent. He simply had never learned, never had the freedom to until she'd come along, and quite frankly she should have seen it coming. She might have, too, had it not been for the far less likely variable of her own developing feelings for him. The ones that should not have happened, but very much had.

The idea that he might want her the way she had come to want him...except there was no might about it. She wasn't as learned in the intricacies as some, but she knew enough to be able to tell the difference between a purely physiological response and one focused on her. This was not the kind of erection based purely in deep-buried sensory-reaction. This was the response of a man who knew very clearly what he wanted. _Who_ he wanted. Even if the exact context was spotty, some things were simple biology.

It slammed into her like a sucker-punch, straight to the gut. She actually felt faint – _faint_ of all stupid, antiquated garbage – but truly, light-headed and short of breath and joints gone as sturdy as fucking marshmallow.

Holy shit, this was real. This was not the product of stress and survival instincts. This was not a response to terror, or relief, or the need for comfort. It had come from natural closeness. And attraction. And…something tinny and shrill was pinging at the back of her mind, faint traces of concern almost completely forgotten.

Did he…surely not. She was almost entirely certain she knew the answer, but she needed to know.

She turned within the frame of his arms, planting a hand against his ribs and pressing gently – and regretted the sudden move instantly. He stepped swiftly back, clearly interpreting her nudge as a demand to get the hell away from her rather than simply giving her the space to face him while keeping her head relatively straight. And of course he would. He was trying to protect himself like any other living creature would. What else could he do?

Her hand twisted, fisting her fingers into the front of his shirt to hold him fast. Which worked frankly better than it should have, more due to his swift defensive response to freeze than any strength of hers.

His eyes were still too wide, too pale, still limned with a bit of that wild creature fear that pulled at her tender heart. She could feel the shortness of his breath, the too-quick rise and fall of it beneath her knuckles where they rested against the plain of his stomach; tight with latent reflex to run.

Steeling herself, she held his gaze and asked.

"That night—in the beginning, did you let me live because I looked like your mother?"

Evidently whatever he had been bracing for had not included this. Confusion creased at the inner corners of his eyes, a new, different kind of unease. He seemed wary, as though he were suddenly worried what the answer to her question might bring.

The moments it took him to weigh his choices were not comfortable. But finally he moved, offering a stiff, not-quite nod – the one he used to indicate both yes and no, or sometimes. In this instance she thought it more to be an answer of: _sort of._ It was possible he had never really known why he'd done it, and perhaps it never became crucial to know. That was fair. It wasn't even the important question.

"Did you…is that why you kept me?"

The creases deepened alongside his confusion. He shook his head once, a slight, jerky motion. But an answer.

No. No was good.

She could feel her own fingers tighten where they gripped his shirt, where they clutched the lip of the sink behind her, trying to channel her nerves into them and away from her voice.

"Do I still remind you of her?"

She hadn't really wanted to ask, especially since it seemed so clear. But she had already missed something so important and it had made her doubt her certainties. If the only thing turning him on was a resemblance to his dead mother…she needed to fucking know.

Comprehension struck, a tiny match of a light sparking in his lovely stormy eyes. He got it now, what she was asking him. Not, she thought, quite the way she meant it, but he gathered the importance of it – how crucial it was that she didn't. When he shook his head this time, it was intent, emphatic even. There was conviction there, earnest and sure, and there was so little guile to him even in his worst moments that she believed it instantly.

 _No._

He hadn't kept her because he hoped she was some reincarnation of his mother, a vessel to house the spirit of a dead woman. Maybe he had kept her out of what he felt was necessity. Maybe because he had been lonely and her presence had made him feel it. Maybe he still didn't know. But one thing was very clear: she was not Pamela. Not only did he know it, he was somehow able to convey in the space of a look how much he did not want her to be.

Thank god. At least in that her assumption had been right, for once.

"All right," she said, the words more whisper than anything with real form, but she had no doubt that he heard them.

He no longer seemed balanced on a hair-trigger to run, so she let her grip on him ease. Her hand was wet, leaving a patch of damp as her fingers uncurled to rest softly against his belly. He might not have been completely relaxed, but she could still feel how little difference it would have made. Jason was not soft around the middle. The body of a farmer, she remembered thinking, of a laborer; strong because he used it, not because he had sculpted it for vanity's sake.

A heady little flutter somewhere far too low to be innocent drew her attention to just how much that appealed to her.

Out of the corner of her eye she saw him lift a hand – a cautious thing, slow and wary – reaching tentatively. She wasn't sure what he'd been reaching for, only that whatever it was, apprehension forced him to retract the hand, fingers curling reflexively inward. Gentle affection tugged sharply at her gut. He was normally so decisive, so calmly confident, to see him so afraid of reproach, of doing something bad, was at once sweet and painfully heartbreaking.

"I promise, it's all right," she insisted, pressing gently with her palm for emphasis, and she could tell by the way his focus cleared, sharpened, that she was much more reassuring this time.

He studied her closely, expression guarded. Again his hand lifted, still tentative where it hovered uncertainly. She could feel his heart hammering against his ribs – or was it her own pulse rattling through her? The tendons in his throat worked as he swallowed, and it was funny how even someone so big could seem so delicate.

There was a question in his hesitation, a request for assurance, for permission

"Go ahead."

With almost the downhill ease of a sigh he reached for her, hand going immediately to her hair. Carefully he stroked, threading the curling, red-brown strands between his fingers, and it was such a simple, genuine thing, so honest, endearing, and a little sad – as though it were something he had wanted to do for a very long time.

Something squeezed in her chest, the urge to cry clutching fiercely at her breath.

She knew what he could do with that hand, brutish in size next to her relatively small shape. He could have shattered her, ruined her, and it would have been easy – as easy as breathing – but he touched her so gently, so _reverently_. Touched her as though he might break her should he be even a fraction too rough and didn't dare. Didn't dare because she was something precious. The hesitance in him was at such odds with such a hulking, powerful form, and yet somehow it fit him perfectly.

Rough fingertips brushed her temple, traced a delicate line down the side of her face, taking generous moments to follow the arc of her cheekbone; and whether the faint tingle she felt in the wake of it was leftover dampness from the water or simply her own hyper-awareness she didn't know.

It was somewhat refreshing, in a way. Neither of the guys she'd been with before had been virgins, and there was an earnestness to Jason that they simply hadn't had. He knew there was something illicit about it, knew what he did was far too intimate for what their relationship had been just seconds ago. He could tell he wanted something, and that it had to do with her, but he still didn't have all the pieces to put together exactly what. For whatever reason, the anticipation of him figuring it out was really almost delicious.

The tip of his index finger grazed her mouth, seemingly studying the shape of her lips, and his eyes…his eyes were _burning_ , fevered as the flush she could feel spreading across her cheeks, the heat pooling between her thighs.

The sound that left her was utterly out of her control; a strangled, gasping, mousy thing that could not have been less sexy if she'd actively tried. And to her dismay, it had the effect of a slap.

Jason flinched back so quickly that she swore she heard the air sing as though cut with a blade. She blinked, startled, but was only able to catch the fresh streak of alarm in the whites of his eyes before he fled – lurching for the kitchen door with a speed that was frankly impressive, considering how clearly disoriented he was. She didn't even have time to open her mouth to offer the reassurance that she already knew wasn't going to come. He was gone. And she was left clinging to the counter in order to keep from sliding to the floor in a puddle.

The tap was still running – she could hear the rush of water behind her, but was helpless to do anything about it. It was all she could do to remember how to breathe.

Holy shit.

 _Holy shit._

That had actually just happened. He had just touched her the way a lover would, had looked at her as if he could make her come with nothing more than the look itself. And he fucking _might_ have. She was so damn wet just for the thought of him.

All of a sudden she understood what it was to crave a man, to want him specifically to the point that her very cells seemed greedy for him. She understood what it was to want sex so badly that she actually _ached._

She had always found the idea of sex better than the doing. She liked it fine, but it never really turned out the way she had always thought it should, and eventually she had decided her expectations were skewed. Now she was faced with the very real possibility that the problem had not been her expectations at all but the potential partner, because Jason seemed to be triggering a physiological response she hadn't known she possessed. Had been since before she had allowed herself to feel it.

Well, she had thought she liked her men lithe and sleek, not built like a brick fucking house. All kinds of revelations to be had, it seemed.

She had no idea how long it took her to catch her breath back, or for her legs to feel like they could hold her weight again; but at some point she was able to turn back to the sink and shut it off. For a moment she stood there, staring down at the slow course of water spiraling its way down the drain.

She'd clearly spooked him, though she hadn't meant to. Hadn't wanted to. She wasn't unsympathetic; she remembered the strength of her emotion scaring her when she'd been younger, the way physical attraction had seemed so intense, so uncontrolled. He would _not_ have liked that. In fact, he might never like it. Just because he found her attractive did not mean he actually wanted to do anything with it, or that he ever would. That was his choice to make, although she (and her currently screeching lady-parts) hoped it wasn't the one he did.

God, she hoped he was all right.

Far too restless to think about sleeping, she picked up where she had left off – before she'd gotten carried away by a good song and silliness and inadvertently started a train wreck. One by one she finished wiping out the cupboards and replacing all the dishes she had spent the better part of an hour washing. Done with that, she nailed a piece of cotton cut from a bedsheet over the kitchen window to make a curtain as she had done with the rest of the ground-level windows. There was nothing she could do about the big ones in the rec room, but she still managed to recreate the sense of security that came with the knowledge that nothing could see in unless she chose.

That done, she went about making her bed situation more palatable.

The couch was too short for her, and Whitney was not enthused about the idea of a repeat experience in spinal compression. Wrestling the seats from the base she laid them on the floor, covering the cracked vinyl with a flannel sheet intended or winter use. With two of the pillows from her bed nest in the tunnel added to extend the length, it was just tall enough for her. Not a permanent situation, but good enough for one night. One thing was for sure, she wouldn't be cold. It felt no cooler than it had at sunset, some time ago now, which solidified her decision to leave the big windows open.

She busied herself with a few other little, menial tasks. Consolidating some of the toys and things from the shelves to make room for her books, arranging her collection of stones and other pretty gifts atop the mantle. Setting the buttercups from her shoe in their glass of water on the table next to the main door. They had been wilting before they ever made it to the water, which was sad, but only to be expected with heat like this.

She had hoped the fussing might distract her, and it had, to an extent. Yet when she ran out of things to do and reluctantly curled up to attempt going to bed, she was unable to ignore the subtle restless tension she was still nursing like a cracked rib.

Rolling onto her back, she threw an arm over her face and swore – unleashing a long, hearty string of profanity that would have scandalized most decent people.

Was she seriously going to lie here all night tossing and turning over the lady version of blue balls? What was that even called? Any other time, any other place, she would have slipped a hand beneath her underwear and just taken care of it. Quite frankly, though, the idea was less than appealing.

She didn't want her own hand.

Not even a little bit.

 _Ugh – for fuck's sake!_

~/~

Jason _burned._ His skin blazed, chafing beneath his clothes, his blood boiling in his veins. The heat and force of his own labored breathing caught against his mask, pressed back against his face, near to suffocating. The flesh between his legs swollen and throbbing as he staggered like a wounded thing in its death throes through the trees, loud as any stupid, mindless human. He didn't know how to stop it, couldn't will his body to quiet, could only stumble through the dark as if in the mindless drive to put as much distance between himself and the source of the agony as he could.

But how was he supposed to distance himself from something that he could not evict from his mind?

She was all he could see, all he could hear; the warm honey of her voice mirrored in her eyes, in her skin, luminous where the candle-glow had touched her, her hair a bright, burning thing. The fire of her seemed to have caught in his very flesh and he couldn't get it out.

" _It's completely normal, it doesn't even mean..."_

But it did. He knew it did. And if the subtle shifts of her expression were any indication, she knew it too.

Yet she hadn't cringed or recoiled. She had murmured soft, soothing things to him in her kindness, allowed him to make real the selfish fantasy of touching that beautiful hair, the graceful bones of her face, her _lips._

And then she…she had made that sound, that airy tangle of notes half gasp and half sigh. He'd heard that exact sound before from other mouths – oblivious to his presence and otherwise occupied in their conjoined writhing – and thought it odd, mildly off-putting. Not so from her: from her voice, her mouth, with the faint, butterfly-wing flutter of her eyelids as her lips parted ever so slightly.

His body tightened, shuddered, nearly sent him to his knees at the recalled image. As it had then, something in him, deep in his belly, clenched like a fist, lightning crackling along his bones, in his veins, until his very breath seemed static in his mouth. His entire existence had narrowed down to her, to the razor-sharp need he'd had to seize her, crush her backward into the counter – body to body – the way it had felt when she'd shifted back against him, lush and sweet and perfect.

His shoulder struck the great trunk of a sturdy old pine and he slumped against it, glad of the support, of something to ground him, to slow the world's spinning.

Desperately he grasped for anger, for something that made sense. Giving himself over to anger had been grounding last time, had settled the noise in his head – but it had also been a result of insult. He could not replicate it on his own, and he could not bring himself to conjure anger for her. His madness was not of her doing. She had done nothing, and he had recoiled from her as though from the bite of a snake, terrified by the urgency of it, by the power of his own craving. He was a monster – he would _hurt_ her. He was ugly and deformed, a killer. Beastly. She had let him touch her out of kindness, a healer's mercy, not because she desired it.

The word stuck in his mind, and he latched onto the interlocking-gears rightness of it.

 _Desire._

Just how it fit so escaped him. The knowing seemed embedded in his flesh, his blood, but his brain continued to flounder, the answer slipping between his fingers, slick and evasive as an eel.

He ground his teeth together, lacking anger but finding stubborn will instead. He had overcome this once, and even if that had been a paltry sliver of _this_ if he had done it once he could do it again. He would. If it took him all night, if it took breaking open his knuckles and bloodying the hands so patiently washed. If it took burying himself in death.

In corpses.

He had work to do. Work that should not wait – should not have waited as long as he'd left it. Work that would surely purge him of this madness.

A moment more. It was all he allowed himself. One more breath; one more scrap of a remembered smile.

Then he set his shoulders and threw himself back into death.

* * *

 **NOTES:**

So…that happened!

For as long as this chapter took me (we won't go into the reasons why because I literally mentally can't) almost all of it was written in less than two days. This was an extremely productive weekend and I'm convinced my hormones are entirely to thank for that. If there are typos or weird things, I apologize. I just finished it and I want to fucking post it – I'll probably fix things later.

I know the first part is kind of boring, but I hope the rest was worth it. Romantic angst is my favorite thing in the goddamn world and I do not think it coincidental that this is the longest chapter yet. And yes, the slow burn bug is still biting. I just can't bring myself to believe this would go any other way with these two. And it's fun!

The silly little dance scene (I am absolute trash) was shameless theft of a similar thing from the 2015 movie The Man From UNCLE. I ripped the song, too. Speaking of which, credit to Solomon Burke for the line of lyrics.

One more quick thing that I might or might not get yelled at about Whitney: the "omg it's never been like this with anyone else" cliché. Except it's really not. I don't know if this is a cliché that originated in truth or denial, but physical chemistry is a thing and it does not operate the same with just anyone, even with people you're attracted to. I'm a trash romance writer, and I'm happy about that, but I've lived this – both the revelation and being shocked by it. If I seem defensive, it's half because I care very much about realism in my smut and this was one of the things that use to irk me. It's real, fam! I promise! Now, the thing that isn't always real is the other compatibility/chemistry necessary to make a good lasting relationship.

That's coming. Or, well…it's already kind of there. I don't know.

Whatever.

My babies are frustrated and I'm tired. But happy.

I love you all so much. As always, thank you for your patience with my slowness, and for all the love you send my way. We've been on this journey for over a year now, and I'm still as touched by the following this story has garnered as I was then. Bless you all.

Until next time!


	18. Distance

**Chapter 18  
** Distance **  
**  
~/13/~

Whitney made it until almost noon before she began to worry in earnest.

Granted, she hadn't exactly gotten up with the sun. Shocking absolutely no one in the history of the universe, she hadn't slept worth shit. Her brain had simply refused to shut down all the way, and it hadn't been solely due to being amped-up physically.

After a point, she had lost track of how many times she had gone over the incident in her head, from his helping her sort through the amassed clutter in the tunnels all the way to his eventual flight response. Now that she knew, it was impossible not to see it: so many signs had been there, she'd just either glossed them over, mistaken them to be something else, or missed them completely, again out of assumptions she'd (stupidly) made. She hadn't had the wherewithal to do any amount of real, deep processing in the moment, and because of that she couldn't help feeling she had mishandled things and rather badly.

Jason was a great many things, but he was neither a coward nor easily frightened. That said, he had never been immune to emotion, either.

Even in her most spiteful moments she had never been able to deem him unfeeling, and what he did feel he felt quite strongly. She had seen rage fit to curdle the blood like sour milk, sorrow deep enough to wound just by witnessing, hollow loneliness, wicked humor, joy so brilliant it was near to blinding. And fear – breath-gripping, paralyzing fear. She had seen that plainly in his eyes last night; reflected in the glass – the whites so stark they had reminded her of those of a prey animal – fear so sharp to look at it had been cutting. Fear that she could not in truth say she didn't understand to some degree.

It had not escaped her notice yesterday that he had chosen to remain near her while she went about her chores. Surely it had been tedious, surely he'd had more important (or at least less boring) things to do. Yet he had lingered.

He seemed to have been comfortable leaving her while she'd slept, but once she was up and awake he had seemed less keen on leaving her alone. It wasn't that she'd minded his presence, because she had truly rather enjoyed it; but she hadn't been able to tell if he was hanging around out of a similar enjoyment of company, or because he had still been worried that were he to leave for too long she might not be there when he came back. It hadn't felt like he was guarding her out of suspected necessity to make her stay, more like he had simply been trying to make himself helpful, or else available to be should she need it. Which was really rather sweet, but also likely indicative of an unexpressed fear.

Throughout the day she'd had to swallow the impulse to drop whatever she was doing, sit him down, and tell him that she was here now because she wanted to be – that she would never just up and go without a word or explanation. But these sentiments, while true, were only words. Words were easily used and easily spent, and even more easily broken. It was something she had to show him, prove through consistence and repetition. Except now she wondered if he wouldn't rather that she did just up and leave.

To experience such a strong reaction to someone, physical _or_ emotional, without any kind of foundational experience or understanding had to have been scary. And ok, yeah, she had been caught a bit unawares, but honestly as soon as her brain had put it together she had known she needed to tread carefully. She should have held her shit together like the grown-ass woman she was. But to be honest, the strength of her own reactions had been a little scary to _her,_ too.

The fumble had been significantly less than ideal, but she had hoped that with a bit of time – a bit of distance with which to process and to breathe – the worst of the shock would ease and he would find his way back come morning. But he hadn't. Time kept ticking resolutely on and no more sign of him than of a sudden freak blizzard, and the longer she waited the more her concern grew.

Since her arrival, not a day had passed whereupon she hadn't seen Jason at least once within a few hours of waking. But she had seen no hint of him since his half-frantic escape from the kitchen. Not as she was scarfing down her breakfast, nor as she ventured to the bathroom building and back to the lodge. She acknowledged that it was possible he'd been around and she had just missed him – he was far stealthier than any living thing had a right to be, after all. Yet she couldn't prevent the suspicion that he had spent his night as far from her as he could get; afraid or repelled or some combination of both.

What if he didn't come back? What if he stayed away until the three days were up and she was forced to make a decision she couldn't be sure was right? How was he supposed to process something like this? He had no way to pose questions or demand explanations, no one to turn to for comfort or for guidance. No one except for her – the cause of the problem.

What if...what if he'd never had an erection before?

It was difficult to imagine that being the case, but nothing about this situation was normal, and even in spite of the number of salacious acts he had probably born witness to she could easily see that being the case. If one didn't know what they were looking at, was a certain response guaranteed? How much was there by nature and how much had to be learned? Had it even been possible for him to see other people that way when so deeply entombed within his own perpetual rage?

She had no idea where to even begin looking for the answers to these questions. But she was not incapable of empathizing with some of the horror and confusion he must have felt.

Learning about sex in all its messy, embarrassing glory was nothing short of awful. It had been for her, at least: an amalgamation of fear-mongering and too-clinical-to-be-reassuring information thrown at her and her classmates in an awkward, stilted jumble. Eventually she had made her peace (as it was) with the injustice that was menstruation and the possibility of pregnancy, and she had come around to being less afraid of and disgusted by the prospect of the acts based around procreation. Some of that had been courtesy of her medical training, some from sheer stubbornness. Some of it had simply come from time and its power to smooth things the way the ocean smoothed the sharp edges of broken glass.

There were very few things Whitney would ever question Jason's ability to handle, but this was one of them. Psychology was not something she had ever studied in depth but she could recollect enough to be worried about the potential effects of a sudden shift in self-perception, and that was in a mind which had maintained a relatively typical social upbringing absent of serious, capital T Trauma.

She had no idea how such a revelation might hit him, lacking as he did so many base layers to ease the transition period which should really have happened in adolescence. An adolescence which he must have skipped. Or else just completely sidestepped in the ways she might have been familiar with. Not that she knew what it was like to deal with adolescence from a man's point of view. She knew only what little she'd been told – minimal snippets at best.

But maybe she was completely off base. He hadn't been so confused that he couldn't put together that he wanted something from her. It had been all over the checked-impulse to touch her, to run a hand through her hair, trace gentle fingertips down her face; and subsequently all over the fact that he'd checked it at all, as though crippled by some deep-buried internal certainty that to do it would be somehow wrong.

She wasn't quite sure what to think about that – how much of it might be a result of the same cruelty that had conditioned him to perceiving himself as so ugly or monstrous that he must hide his face and how much was a result of having absorbed more subtle social biases than she'd expected. Ultimately, it didn't much matter either way: not the root cause, nor whether it was her or himself that had driven him off. What mattered was that her stumbling attempts to reassure him had fallen flat, and she cared too much to allow him to wallow in any kind of shame or distress.

She spent a grand total of twenty minutes pacing back and forth between the kitchen and rec room before she couldn't stand waiting there any longer.

The last thing she wanted was to push him if she wasn't ready, but she didn't want him keeping his distance to the point where it became impossible for him not to associate her with discomfort, either. She was a friend, and he needed to know that nothing about what had happened last night changed that. She couldn't expect him to seek her out now, and if he wouldn't come to her, then she had to go to him. Find a way to smooth this over, to make the new and scary…well, less so.

She had thought it better not to rely on empty words, but that no longer felt like the right choice. Some problems could only ever be solved with words. She would have to prove them, and rightly so, but she couldn't prove what she hadn't said.

 _She_ had a voice. She needed to use it.

Her feet carried her nearly halfway down the porch before she retraced her steps and ducked back inside; reaching for the little table beside the door, her fingers closing around the knife sitting there next to the wilting buttercups.

It had been left for her amidst the piles of other things on the porch, housed snugly in a scored leather sheath, and she had set it there mostly because she didn't know where else to put it. It wasn't a very large knife – nothing near the level of the blade Jason kept in companion to the machete – but it was no steak knife, either. It looked tactical, the handle formed with finger-shaped grooves to ensure a solid grip and notches cut into the base of the blade in companion to the wicked, curving point. She knew it had not come to be there by accident, yet in the moment the sight of it had left her stunned.

To present her with a weapon was incredibly significant. It was both a symbol of autonomy and of trust. It also acknowledged that her new freedom meant he might not always be close enough to avert all dangers, and that in the event such a thing ever happened, she would be armed against them. He wanted her safe, and autonomous.

Even with words he could not have made a louder, more blatant statement of granting her power.

And aside from being powerful and caring, it was also wise. It was one thing to walk to the bathroom and back, but another entirely to wander around in the woods without protection. When she jogged down the porch steps and into the trees it was with the knife tucked securely in the back pocket of her shorts.

There was no path, really, no clear trail to indicate the way – it had gone so long unused. Yet she was becoming familiar enough with the routes to be able to remember where to go in spite of it. She supposed she would head for the house, looping through the camp on her way. If he wasn't there then she would start walking the snare trails. She wouldn't stray from the paths, either the ones properly laid of the ones she recollected clearly from their walks; the risk of getting caught in a hidden trap, or of getting lost, was high enough to caution her. As was the scolding she imagined she would get, silent and glowering but as potent as any verbal lashing, if she did otherwise. If _that_ was unsuccessful, she would return to the house, plant herself like a dandelion, and not move from that spot until he came back.

Fortunately, luck seemed to be with her.

As she approached the house, shoes scuffing lightly against the overgrown trail, movement caught her eye, pulling her gaze to Jason's form descending the shallow steps.

He didn't appear to see her right away, occupied as he was with folding up a sizable length of dirty cloth as he started down the same path toward her. He didn't even seem to hear her – which was as worrying as it was unusual – until she had drawn within several yards of him.

He stopped cold in his tracks, head jerking sharply up, and something about the way his eyes settled on her made her own steps falter.

"Hey," she greeted, conscious of her volume and tone.

She would not be a clumsy idiot twice, damn it.

"I was coming to find you, I—wanted to make sure you were ok."

She had clearly underestimated the affect the previous night's revelations had had on her now that the surprise had faded, for she was suddenly having difficulty focusing on what she was supposed to be doing. Just his standing there looking at her was enough to send her brain skittering into the sensory-memory of the full length of his body against her, wide palm burning hot through her shirt where it pressed against her side. Callused fingertips grazing her lips.

And she'd thought she wanted to climb him like a tree _before._

 _Shit._

But it didn't matter. Truly, it didn't. Sex that would more than likely never take place wasn't worth the loss of the friendship they had so painstakingly cultivated.

"Are you ok?"

She hadn't even noticed her feet move to take another step until she saw his shoulders tighten and hunch ever so slightly inward. Immediately she stilled.

No. No, he was not ok.

The tension was strong enough to taste. He was projecting distance and avoidance, all but _radiating_ it like the glow around the circumference of a full moon, and in truth it didn't surprise her. For once, though, she was having trouble reading his usually quite communicative body language. She couldn't tell if he was afraid of some kind of rebuke, or whether it was the aversion she had been hoping to combat.

Oh, god, did he _blame_ her? Did he consider her at fault for having instigated discomfort and unwanted emotion? A pang of horror sank her stomach like a fistful of stones at the thought.

He wouldn't have been the first man to do so, but she dearly hoped it wasn't the case. She was pretty sure she could handle anything else. Rejection itself was nothing unless it was because of something like that – something _toxic_ and _wrong._

"I'm sorry if I scared you last night, I…I didn't mean to. Didn't want to."

No response came, and she could feel herself starting to curl up internally, not unlike the way he had physically, and worked to shove through it.

"It's ok to feel…what you felt."

 _Oh, sweet jesus._

This was not going well at all. Maybe it would better to throw in the towel now while she still retained most of her dignity.

"It's—it's not bad, it's natural and normal. I promise it's all right."

Still nothing. Nothing but cautious stare and tight, watchful uncertainty. Nothing for long moments wherein she started to think the knots of anxiety might strangle her from the inside.

And then,after seconds that passed with all the slow agony of removing a fingernail broken too close to the bed, he moved.

A single nod. A little short, a little tight, but there. It clearly still felt far from all right to him, and wouldn't unless she found a way to make it so – to paint it in a light that resonated as positive. But it was acknowledgement, and she could work with that.

She cast about for something to use, some way to explain that would accomplish what she wanted and that she could actually say with minimal embarrassment. Surely he had witnessed animals mating, right? Could she use that as an example? Explain that people did the same thing and how? Yes, but hell if she was going to be able to get that out without turning red as the guts of a watermelon and choking on half the words. She hadn't even been able to go into very much detail about her period and its relation to childbirth. So...nope. She needed something simple, straightforward, without any of the heavy emotional or biological baggage that neither of them needed right now. There would be time for that. Maybe. Later. _Much_ later.

"It just means that you...like me."

Jason shifted slightly on his feet, as though in suddenly and intense discomfort. But...no, it wasn't discomfort, per say. She had seen this particular sideways-and-down head tilt before, and while it was faint, she could see even from the distance that the set of his shoulders had actually relaxed ever so slightly. This was _shyness._

Just from that she could tell she had, by some clash of luck and timing, put it exactly the right way for him to make the connection. Whatever else was confusing and strange, he understood the concept of _liking_ someone in the way she meant it – if a bit abstractly.

He must have _just_ been starting to develop an interest in girls when his life had taken its plummeting leap off the edge of a cliff. After that he probably hadn't given a damn whether the people he killed were male or female. He'd just wanted them gone. But if he could comprehend _liking_ then maybe she could explain the rest in a way that wasn't so intense. Or gross. Because _wow_ had she thought sex was gross when she'd been younger. Well, more that her own body had felt foreign and traitorous and strange, and most of that had been due to the social side-effects of adolescence.

He might even now feel a similar kind of self-directed betrayal. The crucial difference was that he didn't need to worry about the kind of judgement she had dealt with. She was going to do her damndest to ensure he felt as safe and accepted as possible in order to adjust, and she knew of only one real way to do this in the rapidly depleting time she had: eliminate the isolation. Both in terms of physical distance, and in emotion.

The anxious introvert in her vehemently did _not_ want to make a move like this. She could actually feel the nervous sweat starting to bead at the nape of her neck and line her palms. The impulse to flee and hide away was a fierce one, but her stubbornness – equally formidable – proved hardy enough to combat it. She could not count on him to draw conclusions from a bare-bones foundation and her likely pathetic attempts to hint at it. And whether or not anything came of it, she had to be plain and clear and _say it._

Her arms came up automatically, wrapping around her own middle in a defensive reflex that she couldn't bring herself to fight. She forced her tight throat to swallow, and softly, almost too quiet to be more than a whisper, murmured: "I like you too."

Even from several yards away and through the obstruction of the mask she swore she saw his gaze sharpen on her. There was a question there, unspecified, uncertain. Disbelieving.

The statement had been vague and nowhere near as articulate as she had wanted, and he couldn't tell how she meant it. Did she mean she liked him the way a friend did – amicable, even affectionate, but no more – or did she mean she _liked_ him. The other way. The _more_ way. Yes and yes. But she didn't know quite how to say it. Suddenly words required the dexterity and skill of brain surgery and she was sorely lacking in both. But he, for all his lack of direct knowledge, was uncannily perceptive; she just had to hint loudly enough for it to click.

She had always been shyer than was good for her, but it wasn't always quite this bad. At work, for example, with the buffer of being a professional and having the focal point of tasks to be done she didn't have as much difficulty. There wasn't as much at stake as there was in situations like this, high-emotion and high-importance. It didn't matter as much if she bungled an encounter with a patient she probably wouldn't see for another year, or who was likely in a less than ideal mood to begin with, being at the doctor's and all. But the cost of bungling _this_ with the wrong word or gesture or tone was so much greater. She risked ruining everything – of sending them to a place worse than where they'd begun.

Ok, that might be a hair dramatic. She wasn't going to fear for her life again, but she _would_ feel like she'd been kicked in the chest by an especially cranky draft horse.

She shifted, digging her fingers into her sides. _God,_ she was a twitchy, high-strung disaster of a human.

"I just..."

What was she _doing?_ She was going to leave in less than two days, wasn't she? _Was_ she? Fuck, she still didn't know. Keeping that in mind, was it worse to leave it, or to attempt to be helpful? _Was_ this even helping? More than likely no. In fact, she was probably making everything actively worse and it wasn't because her brain was rapidly spiraling into crisis-defense-mode.

And yet she couldn't stop it now. Even if it turned out to be a horrendous mistake in any or every capacity, she couldn't help believing that it was better to be real with herself, and likewise real with him. She would handle whatever came after.

Well, she would do her best.

"If you ever wanted to—"

She couldn't say it. _Touch me._ The words simply would not release the death grip they'd seized upon her tongue no matter how hard she tried to spit them out.

"—again, that would be ok. N-not that you have to. You don't. But if you did..."

 _Wow_ she sounded crazy. And now that she'd said it she found herself sweating almost worse than before. The admission, pathetic and full of holes as it was, had left her feeling more vulnerable than expected, and everything in her was desperate to slip away, toss a shaky " _ok, bye_ " over a shoulder, and run. Yet that very same everything knew as deeply as she knew her own name that to do so would have been the worst possible thing she could do.

As agonizing as it might be, she must hold her ground. She couldn't expect him not to be avoidant if she did no different. So she did. Somehow, with thanks to some hitherto unknown well of inner strength or tenacity, she did.

Jason's head turned, angling his chin slightly to the left. She could almost hear the gears turning over and over in his mind: trying to decode her tone, the awkwardness in her posture, the way she had averted her eyes to the ground for the split second it took her to recognize the reflex and correct it to force her gaze up. He was once again wearing his coat, which she was about ninety percent positive he had left on the porch when he'd fled, proving he had come back at some point in the night or early morning to collect it. There was that, at least. The reason she noted it now was because she had just seen the rigid line of his shoulders ease in entirety. The disbelief was still there, but it seemed more...quizzical now than wary. No longer cautious, but baffled.

"It doesn't have to change anything. That's—"

She had been about to say that it was up to him whether anything changed, but she had swallowed the thought before putting it to voice, afraid it might confuse him even more.

"Not if we don't want it to."

The use of the word _we_ was deliberate – yet one more attempt to lessen the rift between them. What she hadn't expected was how it would feel to say it, or to hear it; and once it left her lips she realized how wistful she was, longing and achy in a way completely different than before. Perhaps that was the cause of the misstep, so focused was she on the sore knots tangled around her breastbone that the transition from thoughts to words frayed and began to falter.

"I mean…you almost killed me once—"

Oh, _damn._

Jason visibly flinched, the heel of his left foot scraping an inch-long gouge into the dirt as if having not quite completely managed to curb the reflex to retreat. Guilt and horror flared, and she hurriedly finished making her point.

"—a-and now we're this. It's just another choice. Maybe not as insane of a choice, but…"

 _Oh, for_ fuck's _sake, Whitney_ shut up.

He was still just staring at her with what she was positive was the reproach she deserved, half-poised as if considering the option to simply up and remove himself from the unholy clusterfuck she had just made of an already uncomfortable situation. And the more she talked the worse she was making it, but words kept spilling out of her mouth like water from an overturned basin.

"That analogy made so much more sense in my head. Just forget—"

…and then she heard the snort. His chest dipped, his shoulders jerking with the force of the perfectly startled, undignified laugh that just kept going...and _going_.

He was laughing _._

 _Laughing._

Not only that but he was nearly doubled-over, bent at the waist, clutching the bundle of cloth to his chest and shaking with the ferocity of the laughter she couldn't hear, and she couldn't tell if she was more relieved or stunned. More than anything she felt as though she'd been hit over the head with a sizable rock. Was this a good thing? Had she somehow managed to diffuse the iron tension by accident? Or had she sent him spiraling into hysterics?

She risked moving closer, her steps narrow and cautious as she drew near, only to skitter half a step back when abruptly he straightened – fearful of intruding into his space when he might not want her there.

His chin angled down to look at her, and she did not think it chance the way his eyes found hers so quickly, nor that the caustic mix of unease and wary disbelief of moments earlier were now nowhere to be seen.

Maybe it was just her imagination, but he seemed to be trying to tell her that she'd succeeded in making her point, even if she had made a mess of doing so. Hell, it was possible having been so ungraceful about it had actually worked in her favor. It might have shown him that she was just as nervous as he. Nervous, and not for reasons based in fear or dislike, but because she, too, turned into something of an anxious wreck where serious crushes were concerned. She wasn't actually sure she could call this a crush anymore. She was far too emotionally invested to call it that – not that she knew what word existed to describe it, and she wasn't ready to dig too deep into the possibilities.

It didn't matter. All that mattered was that the rigid lines in his posture were gone, and he was no longer eyeing her like he was waiting for punishment. Or rejection.

The thought stung, sudden and biting like a thorn. The idea that he might assume she would reject him, and the reasons why...but she didn't blame him if he had.

He blinked once, slowly, calmly, as if waiting for her to say something more, and she felt herself take another cautious step toward him. For reasons, she told herself, not simply because she was craving some reassurance of her own.

"Are we ok?"

The question was mousy and tight in her throat, but he seemed to have no problem hearing her. Something about his eyes warmed ever so slightly. There was still a hint of uncertainty there, something tentative and perhaps a bit bewildered, which told her he would likely be doing a good amount of processing during the day. But he seemed far more stable than before.

Adjusting the cloth so that it draped over one arm, he extended the other hand to make the same little patting motion he had used to assure her that she didn't need to freak out over his wounds.

 _Ok._

The relief was swift, flooding her with the same airy lightness of an intravenous high.

They were ok. Maybe a bit regressed from where they had been in terms of ease and comfort, but that was fine. So long as they were all right, the rest could be mended. For the first time since finding him, her exhale left her without constriction.

She glanced down at the cloth he carried – burlap, she noticed, its rough weave choked with dry clods of dirt – and seized upon the object as a means to shift the conversation.

"Are you in the middle of something?"

Following her gaze to the fabric and gave a little half-shrug, tilting his head vaguely. Yes, but also no.

"Do you want help?"

He lifted his focus to her, the look gone outright bewildered, as though asking why she would ask such a question.

"You helped me all day yesterday, so I'll help you today."

It was partly true, but really she just wanted an excuse to be near him, because how else was she supposed to ease him out of avoiding her like she was the walking plague? That wasn't what he was doing. He had been protecting himself like anyone would, and the reflex to do so had been more than valid. It was very possible he no longer would, but time was not on her side and she wanted to make sure; wanted to ensure any remaining scraps of negative association were smoothed away.

"Unless you don't want me to."

Jason lifted his shoulders in a shrug and gave a sideways nod.

She blinked, bemused.

"Was that a _please don't_ or a _do what you want_ kind of nod-shrug?"

Her reward for her flippancy was the hint of a smile creasing around his eyes, which she celebrated with an internal screech of victory. His empty hand lifted, holding up two fingers.

"Good," she said airily, "I _will_ do what I want, thank you."

The smile lines deepened, and she caught the motion of another laugh in the line of his shoulders.

Yes. _Yesyesyes._ If she could make him laugh then they really must be ok.

Then he was moving toward her, his unoccupied hand lifting in a beckoning curl, and she fell happily into step with him.

They headed back down along the path she'd just traversed, from the house through the camp and descending into the trees. She didn't recognize the exact spot at which they entered, though she did note that the foliage seemed thicker there than most of the game trails which formed a base for the snare lines – apart from the places where the plant-life had been crushed and broken as though by something large charging blindly along. Still, the going was easier than it could have been, and the silence that enveloped them outside of the noise of her own footfalls was so wonderfully easy that she could almost have cried. It wasn't exactly comfortable, not as it had been. But that was just due to the sense of newness. They were a little awkward again, the way they had been at the start of their walks together, unsure quite where the boundaries lay, or what to do with them. At least, that's how it seemed to her.

It was a situation quite unlike anything she was familiar with. While she'd had plenty of crushes, she had never been the one to declare feelings for someone else, and this...this was nothing like that. She wasn't waiting for him to notice her – he'd noticed just fine on his own. She was waiting to see whether he decided to do something about the shift in his feelings, or whether he indicated he'd rather _she_ do something. And it was still possible that he wouldn't want either. That was as fine as it had been before. But for all she was determined now to act as though nothing had changed for the sake of his comfort, she was not about to say she wasn't a bit of a wreck.

She was excruciatingly aware of just how close he was to her at any and every given moment, how he measured his steps to match hers, often slowing when she struggled with the occasional tangle of brush – which she did more often than she should have because she was so damn distracted. Distraction that was likely to render her mostly bare legs a canvas littered with an artful array of scratches. She was aware of every sound he made, every deep breath, every rustle of clothing or leaves that wasn't of her own making.

She had no idea if Jason was as hyper-focused as she was, and there was nothing in the world that would tempt her to ask. He seemed perfectly composed, and either he was doing a much better job of handling his shit than she was, or he was extraordinarily skilled at faking it.

They continued that way for about a quarter mile, when out of nowhere his hand found her, curving around her upper arm, and she nearly jumped out of her skin at the contact.

She wasn't startled. Not really. It was simply that what had become familiar over the span of weeks was suddenly not so. They hadn't touched since last night, and it was suddenly clear that she couldn't now feel his hand on her without thinking of the way he'd touched her mouth last night, fingertip lingering over the curve of her lower lip as though he'd been thinking about what it might feel like to kiss her.

Jason didn't seem to have thought much of it beyond the purpose of gaining her attention – and of pulling her to a stop, as he did. Not until she looked up to meet his eyes and saw the spark of what might have been a very similar realization in them. He released her, slowly, and she could see his throat work on a compulsive swallow. His fingers folded inward briefly, skimming together as if to rid them of the ghostly remnants of the texture of her skin – which she might have found offensive had she not completely understood it. Once recovered, he pointed to her. Then he pointed to himself, the two fingers he used to point spread in a narrow V to clearly indicate his own eyes, telling her to watch, finally angling his fingers down at his feet as he took a deliberate step forward.

She understood what he couldn't say. They were going to be crossing terrain with which she was completely unfamiliar and which was more heavily protected. More dangerous. He wanted her to follow, and he wanted her to be careful where she put her feet.

"Walk where you walk," she echoed, and he nodded. "Got it."

She expected him to set off now that she'd confirmed she understood what to do, yet he lingered for a moment, hesitating, and she had the distinct sensation of standing at the edge of a precipice she couldn't see. She spared a glance for the burlap he carried, seeing now the coppery stains amidst the dirt, remembering the bodies she had seen him haul down to the tunnels to do away with – each wrapped in a length of cloth.

All of a sudden she wondered if it had been the right decision to force her company on him. She didn't know what they were doing or where they were going, but she knew right then that it was going to involve at least one dead body.

Right on the heels of that doubt came a strange sort of awe. He had brought her this far knowing at the end of the line lay something he knew full well she would more than likely find distasteful? She was actually somewhat shocked that he hadn't sent her away at the offer of help, which made her wonder why he hadn't. Was it because he had given her free will and was refusing to go back on it? Or was there something else beneath that?

Was he trying to remind her of the lives he had taken, of all the things he'd done? As if she'd somehow forgotten between this moment and just two nights ago when she'd watched him split a girl's rib cage in half to get to her?

It seemed ludicrous to imagine it, but somehow she couldn't help thinking that was exactly what he was doing.

 _Turn back now._

 _It's not too late to change your mind._

It was another little layer of defense meant to spare him from potential wounds that would heal nowhere near so quick or so cleanly as the ones she had found vanished overnight.

She knew he had taken lives. She knew it just as she knew that he tended to cast his eyes down and hunch his shoulders when he felt shy or embarrassed or vulnerable. But he hadn't always been a killer. Men weren't born killers. They weren't born shielding their faces from the world. They weren't born rigid, unchangeable things. That above all other things he had proven. And he was only a man: flesh and bone, born of love, capable of joy and laughter and deep feeling. Capable of wanting companionship.

Whatever she was walking into, she wasn't going to like it. But she was going to go nevertheless. She figured it was her turn to prove some things.

Mustering a smile, she gestured him onward with a sweep of her arm.

"After you."

Altogether the trek was considerable – well over a mile if she was any judge – though she didn't starting thinking it until the trees had begun to disperse, grateful for the reprieve from what had been a challenging romp over fallen trunks and gnarled roots and other obstacles. She hadn't dared stray more than a few inches from the places where Jason's steps had marked a safe path for her, and just the concentration it had taken to do so had been tiring.

She didn't realize they had crossed out of the woods and into a yard at first. Not until she registered that there was grass beneath her feet – burnished with the yellow-brown patina of summer. Grass of a kind that was never found in the wild. That was when she looked up and saw the house.

Well…in truth she really just glanced at the house itself; long enough to register that it was huge and that it was clearly the kind of place someone with far too much money than they knew what to do with kept as a summer vacation home. Other than that she didn't pay it much attention. There were other, much more engaging things to look at.

Such as the police cruiser parked out front.

Such as the thick, red-brown stains which streaked the front door and pooled, dry and flaking, on the stoop below.

Such as the body of the boy laid out at the base of the shallow porch, blood drenching the front of a pale plaid shirt stiff, dark hair tousled around his lolling head.

Without a single hitch Jason headed straight for the boy, unfolding the cloth as he went in order to cast it over the body as though covering something unsightly. Though not, she recognized, as though he'd hoped she wouldn't see. It was a weird combination of impassivity and respect. Neither the death nor the mess bothered him, but he didn't particularly relish it either.

It had been meant as a courtesy, unquestionably. He knew how she felt about the killing from her reactions to seeing previous bodies alone, and had acted to remove the visual so as not to cause her undue distress. But as she considered it she began to wonder...had there been a hint of shame? Not guilt – he felt his cause justified and likely would until either he met his grave or time stopped, whichever came first. But shame, she could see. Either for a judgment he might think she had for him, or because of his own need for it, the origins of the purpose or the catharsis it served him. Or maybe it wasn't that at all, but simply regret, as though this had been a kill he would rather not have made.

Although frankly she was pretty convinced that every kill was a kill he would rather not have had to make.

She surveyed the scene around her; the front door which stood open on its hinges, as though someone had left in a hurry and hadn't bothered to close it – because they'd left at a dead run, most likely. Who had time to think about closing doors in the midst of a panic? The dirt had been churned up by many feet, which the heavy rain only seemed to have solidified into shape instead of smoothing everything away. There was a fireplace poker lying a foot or so away from the body, next to what looked like a wok pan. Weird, but there it was.

Then her eyes fell on the motorcycle – a classic Triumph chassis customized over years spent in labor and love. Clay's bike. She would have known it in her sleep.

What had happened here?

Some things she could surmise. The missing flyers in her brother's bag told her he'd been out looking for her. Posting them would do little good somewhere so rural, so he must have been going door to door and asking, which must have been how he'd ended up here. Was this where he'd run into Jenna? And surely she wouldn't have been out here on her own. It was summer break and she'd had something of a college look about her, so she must have been out here with some friends.

Oh, how familiar that scenario sounded. Whitney, Mike, and his buddies might have gone about the poor-man's version of it, but it wasn't all that different really. Except she and her unfortunate camping companions had, in their ignorance, actively trespassed upon land they'd had no rights to. This was someone's house, on someone's legal property, and while obviously a seasonal retreat, it didn't appear unlived-in. If Jason considered it part of his territory, there would have been conflict enough by now to ensure the owners and any guests of theirs stayed well and clear away, surely?

"This isn't on camp grounds, is it?" she asked. She was still looking at the bike, but she saw the white shape of the mask move from side to side as Jason shook his head in answer. "So they must have—"

Aside from the motorcycle and the cruiser, there were no other vehicles to be seen, which couldn't be right. Homes out here were not within walking distance of anything except maybe a neighbor, and that had to be especially true for the wealthy. They would have had to drive in, and if the car was gone then that could only mean that some of them had left in it – and for all the signs of someone having left in a hurry, she didn't think whoever had fled had done so in a car. There was no way Jason would have allowed that. She wasn't actually sure he wouldn't be capable of flipping a truck onto its back if he was good and pissed, and that he wouldn't have done so in order to prevent his prey from fleeing.

They must have gone to the lake, then. It had been hellishly hot that day, and the lake was the only body of water that could be used for recreation in the area (as Wade had researched, and proceeded to tell anyone with near-to-functioning ears). Some of them had likely driven out to the water – thinking to splash around and cool off – only to be met with the same penance given to all other trespassers. Maybe others had come looking for them? Or maybe one of them had managed to evade capture long enough to hightail it back here. Jenna, perhaps? She could think of no reason why Jason would leave the grounds except to track down someone who owed him a death. Except maybe one.

If it had been intolerable before to allow people to set foot on his soil, it had become doubly so simply for the risk they represented to her; whether to her safety or to her remaining there with him. It was the reason behind his choice to come back to her rather than immediately setting after the rest of his prey, the almost pained response when she had asked him to let her go that final time. It was why he had reacted the way he had to her being taken away, and what had tipped him fully from captor to something else. She didn't need confirmation to know any of this to be true.

"All right then," she heard herself say, the words coming as if from far away rather than her own mouth.

Had she known that she had been offering to help clean up the scene of probably more than one murder? She must have – deep down. She'd known what she would find here and had come along anyway. And it should bother her – all of it, from the scene itself to her willingness to tag along, to the fact that said willingness hadn't so much as budged now that she was standing there in the aftermath. But it didn't really…which, frankly, probably should have bothered her even more. Was it callus of her not to be bothered by the deaths that had occurred here? She wasn't uncaring; she was sorry for the waste, for the loss and the pain suffered by families and loved-ones, and she didn't particularly want to have a hand in dealing with the bodies. But the death itself, and Jason's part in it, wasn't much of a problem anymore.

Was it possible to understand and accept an act without directly sanctioning it? A month ago she would have answered that question very differently.

Turning to Jason, she pointed to the cruiser. "Are there keys for this?"

~/~

All through the night Jason's head had been reeling. The way it had when he'd been little and beset with a fever, when days had bled together in a swirling fog amidst the channels of his brain. He had thrown himself into the work of hauling bodies, starting with the one left crucified upon a hay hook at the back of an old farmer's truck – untouched, which he had expected, but which also succeeded in adding a dash of much-deserved guilt to the slurry of other less than pleasant emotions. He worked half by muscle memory, and far more slowly than he normally would. For all that his flesh seemed wired with an excess of energy, it felt as though every movement required him to wade through the soupy mess in his head as he might have deep water or mud. He knew it was only in his own mind, and knew after the hours he'd spent trying to combat it that struggling did nothing but exacerbate the difficulty. Not that knowing it stopped him.

He fought it all through the dark hours and far into the daylight. He fought it as he trekked back and forth through the woods to the wealthy house on the slope to the tunnels, hefting bodies gone cold and stiff with death, heavier by far than they should have been – or than they truly were.

Had he deigned to look at the reasons he would see his shame at his lack of control, both for its own sake and for the witness to it. That of all the witnesses it had been _her_. He would see his own fear that he had offended her – whatever words she had given to the contrary – that he might never see her again. A fear trumped only by that of its opposite, because the idea of seeing her again came close to rendering him right back where he had been the night before – a trembling wreck of unsteady joints and unreliable flesh, clinging to the bark of a tree and trying in vain not to drown. He would see the burgeoning threads of self-loathing just starting to take root inside himself.

Blame was something Jason was intimately familiar with. He knew and accepted the things he'd done, whether willful or un, and that most of the world (his victims more so than most) considered them beyond the realm of simply bad. In his worst days he might approach the realm of internalized degradation, but he had never hated himself. If he'd had the time to cultivate it further, he very well might have from that point on. Fortunately, that was time he was not granted.

At first he'd thought her a figment of his apparent delirium, but for the fact that as soon as his eyes found her standing there on the path everything around him stopped – including the reeling in his head.

It wasn't that he had been avoiding her. That would have required active intent, and the only intent Jason had allowed himself had been in the pursuit of seeing to the mess he'd made. He supposed it could be said that he had avoided the thought of her, but it had been avoidance tattered by utter failure, so he wasn't sure that counted. Pitiful as it had been, the effort he had made in the attempt had shattered the instant he laid eyes on her again, and for all he tried he could not quash the spark of want that seemed to flush like adrenaline through his blood.

It was that quick, the space of a glance, of a breath, and he felt as incapacitated as something small and furry ensnared between the coils of a snake. Yet as frightening as it might have been, he relished it too, and he understood there was much he would do - and not much he wouldn't – just to be allowed to look at her.

He understood immediately that she had tracked him down purposefully and braced himself for whatever came next. He expected her ire, or perhaps more of her selfless reassurance, and when it became clear it would be the latter he found himself wishing she would drop the kindness and, if not yell, then simply leave him be. He didn't want to hear her tell him yet again how normal everything was. He had no concept of normalcy; the word was as meaningless as air stripped of oxygen and just as helpful. He didn't want to hear her tell him over and over again that everything was fine when nothing would ever be _fine_ again.

She had to know she didn't need to do this, that she didn't need to pretend. Well...no, she didn't. Even now she had perfect reason to be feel she _must_ pretend, either for her own sake or for her brother's, not realizing that he could no longer feel the pull to find and kill even had he wanted to pick it up again. And yet if she was pretending it was extremely convincing, which would have been new, for she had never before been anything close to a good liar. Yet he couldn't imagine why she would lie even to be kind. What good would it do her? What would a lie gain her after all these weeks? He couldn't think of anything, and everything about the way she spoke and held herself implied a shy uncertainty bordering on the edge of terror quite similar to the one he'd felt thrashing around inside himself since yesterday. Thrashing like a grounded fish drowning on air.

She seemed to be trying to convey something beyond simple reassurance and while glad that she was still able to bring herself to speak to him, he was not above admitting that her lack of directness about what she was trying to say without actually saying it was causing his own quite unsteady nerves to fray even farther than they were already.

And then, as if she'd read that very thing straight from his bones, the bland reassurances stopped. She regarded him, head tilted ever so slightly to the side, eyes warm...soft, and when she spoke again it was to utter six tiny, seemingly insignificant words that resonated where soothing platitudes about normalcy had all fallen flat.

 _It just means you like me._

The relief that came over him was almost profound. This wasn't the false sympathy of someone kind-natured. She didn't think he was rude or crass or any other foul thing he couldn't think of. She didn't think he was like all those other...

His mind stopped mid-motion, grinding to a halt as it caught up with the feverish things the relief had been throwing at him. He had been pleased she hadn't linked his behavior with that of the other people he had drawn the similarity to, only to realize he couldn't know that to be true. Nor could he know whether it was a _good_ thing to not be like them in this particular situation. Now that he considered it; if she kept calling it normal, whether it felt (or even was) that way, then she believed it to be, which meant she _did_ view him as any other person. And as thoroughly as he had rejected humanity or personhood as a part of his identity, it all of a sudden struck him that this was exactly what he wanted. Because if she saw him not as a monster but as just another person, then maybe...

Maybe what?

He _did_ like her, yet _like_ as he understood the meaning of the word came nowhere close to what he truly felt. It was inadequate, wasn't enough to describe the craving for her company, for her touch. The sharp desire to spend the rest of time sitting next to her in the shade of a tree listening to her read, or watching the crinkle of her nose and the fine, faint creases at the corners of her eyes as she laughed. The urge to abandon what he had been before; to shed it like a snake's old skin, to be no longer hunter, killer, but instead...something else.

He wanted to be _hers,_ Jason discovered _._ To be with her in the holding of hands kind of way, the resting of a head on a shoulder kind of way – the way she had been with that boy he had butchered before ever seeing fully seeing her for the first time. She was here now because she had chosen to be, but he wanted her to _want_ to be there, not simply to have chosen for whatever amalgamation of reasons she had to do so. To be with him not just because she cared as she might have cared for any other lonely, wounded thing. He wanted it more than he had ever wanted anything. But just as he could not be sure whether even a small part of her had stayed for any reason other than to protect her brother, he could not expect it of her.

There was no maybe.

It wasn't her fault – none of it was. If she thought she must stay to keep him from hunting down and murdering her family it was only because he had given her reason to believe it, whatever anguish it might cause him to think it might be true. It wasn't her fault that things had happened the way they had. It wasn't her fault that he felt what he did, or that he no longer understood his place in the world without her. He could not... _would_ not punish her for that. He wouldn't have had the will even if he wanted to.

"I like you too," she said then, and it was nice, in a way, to know that in spite of all that had changed, his propensity for cycling through a near-constant state of bafflement had not. Or it might have been, had the revelation come to him at any other time.

Suddenly he had no idea how to read her. He knew what he thought she meant, what the word itself meant literally, and yet there was a part of him that questioned whether he fully understood what was going on behind the topmost layers of her voice and lovely face. Whatever the intent was behind the surface words, she meant it, that much he could tell. But he didn't understand the way she said it, with the almost-hushed tone of a confession, as though divulging a secret.

What was she actually trying to say to him – that she cared? But he already knew she did. It was echoed in her actions, the way she spoke to him, interacted with him, showed concern when he was hurt; and whether simply the actions of a kind person or not it was her conscious choice to bestow them on him. Something he could not see her having done had she not grown to see and know him the same was he had for her. But it seemed as though she were trying to say more than that, and he didn't understand what else there could be because it wasn't as if...

He saw her arms tighten around her own middle as though she were trying to reassure herself, and there was a part of him – an uncomfortably strong part – that itched to cross the distance and somehow perform the act for her. Reassurance, that was, not so much the embrace...although he would not have been opposed to that part either. Well, he _was_ opposed on sheer principal, because it had been made clear he could not be trusted within five feet of her. Not that he could have gone to her anyway. He was rooted in place, his focus narrowed onto her, for in spite of her silence the latent energy in her posture informed him he was waiting for something, the heavy sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach telling him everything her words had not.

This was the part where she told him _but not like that,_ that it could never happen again. And he knew that. He knew better than to so much as imagine she could ever want anything to do with him in that way.

He knew what he was, had heard it so many times that it would be forever ingrained in his mind. Ugly, freak, stupid – _monster_. No. As affectionate as she might be, she didn't want anything more from him than what they'd already established, and he understood. He _did._ But he couldn't shut out the sting of it entirely. Nor could he cut her off, prevent her from vocalizing what he already knew full well to keep it from cutting even deeper, so he braced himself for the impact, resolving himself to dull the pain to come as best he could.

Nothing – nothing in the vast, limitless span of the world – could have prepared him for what next came out of that soft, pretty pink mouth.

"If you ever wanted to—" She paused mid-statement and his brain struggled to catch up with the words that didn't match his expectation, with the faint flush that dusted her cheeks. The breath she took, seemingly in place of an unspoken words, caught in her throat. "—again, that would be ok."

In that moment Jason would have sworn upon his mother's grave that his heart had stopped.

"N-not that you have to. You don't. But if you did..."

Shock collided into him with the force of an avalanche, burying him within the span of a second. He actually felt physically unsteady, as though he might knock himself over were he to breathe or blink or _think_ too hard.

He knew he was staring at her, knew she could probably tell that his mouth had dropped open in spite of his obscured face simply by the way he was gaping and he almost couldn't bring himself to care. Had she just...surely not. He didn't even want to consider it, because if he was wrong – if he misinterpreted this, of all things – it would be beyond humiliating. It would be _devastating._ He would never be able to look at her again. His grip had tightened upon the burlap he'd been using to wrap and carry the bodies in, to contain awkward limbs and potential mess, he could feel his knuckles whitening as he clung to it as though it had the power to anchor him, to pull him out of the roiling quagmire his brain had been reduced to.

 _What_ would be ok? If he wanted to _what_ , again? Not have whatever the tightening in the groin was happen again, surely. He had no control over that whether he wanted to or not and he suspected she knew that. So what did she mean?

He cast his memory back, intending to scour through the tense, awful, wonderful minutes he had been working quite hard not to think about since they'd occurred. Yet all he could think of was the soft strands of her hair gliding between his fingers, the copper tones in them burning like raw metal in the hard light of a battery-powered lantern, and the texture of the skin lying over the delicate bones in her face, the warmth of her cheek. The inexplicable, almost magnetic pull of his gaze down to the curve of her lower lip. The way the tightness in his stomach had stirred with the sudden, powerful need to trace the shape with a fingertip. He had done it before he could truly think about it, so consuming had been the compulsion.

In the moment he had been convinced that her tolerance was only due to her good nature, that it could be the only reason for it. He had been sure that he had been out of line – that he had frightened her, _disgusted_ her – but now, with space to ease the panic and make way for new logic, he found he was no longer so certain.

In order for that to be true, he would have to ignore everything that had come before it: the way she'd sought to include him in her joyful dancing, the subsequent invitation into her new home. It would require forgetting the tender focus she'd shown him as she'd rubbed soap into the creases of his palms without seeming to care about the grime. The look on her face in the split second it had taken the current of his terror to jolt his body into motion had been nowhere close to fear. Nor horror, nor disgust. Surprise, perhaps, but more, too. All of a sudden he was forced to wonder if he had been interpreting the expression he had thought to be founded in fear that way because it was the nearest thing he knew and understood, even when her body language said something different.

Now that he was able to think beyond the panic he could remember: the pressure of her hand on his as if to lock him in place when he had tried to back up and give her the space he'd thought she wanted, the subtle curve of her shape as if fitting her own body against him – a move that had been purely hers, not his. Heat curled beneath his skin just at the memory. He could almost feel the graze of her fingertips against his stomach, a soft, barely-there touch through his shirt as she'd released her grip on the worn cloth, so close to the tight, urgent throb in his groin. Soft, yet lingering. Too lingering to be completely absentminded.

And that's where his logic met the chasm of what he didn't know. At that point she'd had no need or reason to touch him, not even to curb his reflex to escape. But then, just because she hadn't needed to didn't mean she hadn't wanted to...

The thought caught in his mind as though he'd walked through a spiderweb, fine and clinging and impossible to dislodge.

Had she _wanted_ to touch him? Wanted him to touch her? But it couldn't be that simple – it couldn't be that at all. That was…personal. That was the word his mother had used. _Personal._ Spoken with the explicit implication that this meant out of bounds to any and everyone else, that no one would or should have anything to do with it, including himself. Which, now that he considered it, clearly could not be the truth in full. He could accept the probability of a few deviations from a rule like this, but it did not account for the sheer number – vast enough he could not have counted even if he'd made the effort – of people he had witnessed breaking it over the years. There were times, he surmised, that within certain contexts, what was personal became somehow less so. Enough that sharing became acceptable, perhaps even expected. But that couldn't have been what she meant.

And yet...

He couldn't dislodge the recollection of the sound she had made, breathy and faint and perfectly pitched to rattle the bones in his spine.

In his undeniably agitated state he had mistaken it for a negative response to something he'd done, whether by touching her or standing too close or looking at her in a way that scared her. But it had been an assumption made based on responses garnered from other people over many years, one based in muscle memory and the reflex of repetition, and for all that he had heard such a sound in very different contexts having it directed at him could only have been a bad thing. But it had not been. She was as good as saying it...or so it seemed.

Or was it?

She was throwing words at him again, half tripping over them in a haste that read like nervousness he didn't understand, as if the silence she knew he could not change was making her nervous. She said that nothing had to change; yet while the word she used was _we_ , he had a very distinct feeling that what she meant was _you_. Nothing had to change if _he_ didn't want it to. Yet it was far too late for that. Everything had changed, and the things he had wanted he wanted still, both vague and sharp at once.

But what did _she_ want? Why did it feel like her saying it was in the hope of the opposite? Why had it seemed that her telling him he didn't have to do...whatever it was she was referring to had been a courtesy, when what she really wanted was _for_ him to do it.

The words muddled again, the syllables running together like paint and oil for all they were perfectly audible he lost track of what she was saying until he heard her reference to his having nearly killed her. He had barely caught it yet she might as well have slapped him. The flinch was purely instinctual, his mind so helplessly overwhelmed that the reactions had nowhere else to go but to spill out into the physical, rendering him rigid and brittle. He nearly staggered as though she really had hit him, and he dug his heel into the earth to steady himself.

He was still staring at her, and once the stars left his vision he could see her again – more specifically the look on her face. She was startled, so completely horrified by what had come out of her own mouth that he couldn't help the surge of sympathy, nor the amusement which followed on sympathy's feather-light footsteps.

She wasn't making the point he thought she was trying to. The choice she was referring to had not been _just_ a choice, its impact nowhere near insignificant. She was trying to convince him that it was no big deal, this other choice she was supposedly laying at his feet, but he knew better. There was nothing simple or easy about it, especially not when he had minimal clues as to what this choice actually was and no way to plead for more information.

The laughter caught him by surprise, as did the half-hysterical force of it. It crashed against his ribs and wrenched its way out and he laughed like a man deranged, clinging to the length of burlap and curling into the burn of pure exertion in his belly. He was wheezing by the time he managed to wrangle some composure, nearly winded and nursing a cramping stitch in his ribs.

Whitney's eyes were cautious when he found them again, a tiny crease between her brows making her worry clear.

"Are we ok?" she asked, and it was so tentative, as though she were afraid of the answer. Afraid, he realized, that _she_ had somehow ruined things.

The idea was so ridiculous to him that it nearly pitched him into to a second bout laughter, but it was what lay behind the concern that truly reached him, because he recognized it as surely as if he were looking in a mirror. The clinging, desperate need for it to be ok, to not have destroyed something precious. He had felt it almost constantly for the better part of two days. And if she could be feeling as much concern about it as he was, then logically that must mean that everything _was_ all right.

Logic. There was no logic in this. It was impulse and longing and wildness and everything but, and yet it pulled far more strongly than the comfortable structure logic ever had. And that's precisely what was happening, he realized. He was being pulled into her and he was fighting it tooth and nail. He had fought it before too, and it had been fighting an inevitability which had done nothing but lead him straight here. It seemed that the answer was not to fight it, but to embrace it.

Folding the burlap over the crook of his arm he sent her the soothing, placating signal she would recognize. More direct, he felt, than a nod. He had nodded before and it had been something of a lie. This was not.

The moment he truly believed that things really were ok was in the midst of her offering him help. Not the offer itself, per say – that had taken him quite by surprise and his immediate response had been of clash of puzzlement and a swift throb of terror, until he remembered that it wasn't his place to shelter her from a reality she had already faced in far worse ways. No, it was the flash of gentle humor in her voice as she hassled him about his lackluster answering shrugs, the snarky assertion that she would do what she wanted and the automatic amusement it brought him which convinced him that everything was all right. Except...it wasn't really.

All he knew for sure now was that she wasn't angry, she wasn't demanding that he keep his distance. That she still wanted to maintain their friendship as it had been. But everything else was simply conjecture. She had implied, mostly through things unsaid and nonverbal cues that no doubt any other man raised around other humans would have seen and understood. All she had really succeeded in doing was making him almost more desperately confused than he had been in the heat of his panic the night before, simply in a different way.

She followed along beside him as he led the way into the trees, and while he was doing his best to project calm nonchalance, inside he felt as though he were going to burst with the desire to stop, grab her by the shoulders and demand that she tell him all the things she _hadn't_ said – what she wanted from him. Something he couldn't do for at least three reasons.

He made sure to keep a healthy distance – enough so that they wouldn't touch, but not so much that it was obvious he was doing so. In spite of what had happened, she clearly felt safe to be near him. While he wasn't sure how much of what had happened had been due to contact or something else, he would not risk her willingness to stay with him for something he didn't as of yet know how to control.

He wasn't thrilled with the idea of her coming with him to a place so freshly tainted with death. Yes, she had seen worse, right up close and screaming, but it was different in the moment; in the midst of the killing he had been able to justify it, but in the light of day, in front of her...the shame chilled him. And yet there was a part of him that wanted her to see, wanted the punishment her inevitable revulsion would be. He needed her to prove the truth he knew deep in his bones – that whatever she might have thought right now in this moment, she could not truly want him. He had to kill the possibility, kill the hope, before it ate away at him to the point where he couldn't recover.

The walk was not a comfortable one. He had been in the lead for the majority of their walks together, so this should have been a return to pattern, but just now her presence at his back was oddly unnerving.

He very clearly recalled insisting to himself once that he absolutely _was not_ afraid of her – such a small, slender wisp of a girl. But he was no longer too proud to face the fact that he absolutely _was_. Yet he wasn't sure what he feared most, her, or that he wanted her, and that the things he wanted tended to be ripped away from him in brutal, scarring ways.

Upon rounding the house he was already unfolding the dirty length of fabric. He went straight to the body left out for quick retrieval, swiftly tossing the burlap across the length of it, effectively concealing the shell of the boy he'd killed in the overlarge shed. He wanted Whitney to remember what he was, but he didn't want to add to the already lengthy list of horrible things she'd been exposed to in his company. Not that she seemed overly concerned with this particular sin.

She was surveying the remnants of the carnage. He fancied he could see her fitting the details together like puzzle pieces.

Her eyes fell on the motorcycle. Jason had written it off as just another vehicle belonging to the people in the house, but he saw the recognition in the lingering stare, the slight furrow between her brows, and knew his assumption had been incorrect. Inexplicably he felt the itch to move, to conceal it as well, though he was at a loss as to why.

Vaguely she asked him whether they were still on the camp grounds, and he shook his head in answer though he suspected she had already known. His stomach sank, certain that she was asking in order to gauge how far she might be from the road – a certainty confirmed, he thought, when she abruptly pointed to the car the policeman had driven and inquired about keys. Regret and sour, ugly relief twisted in his belly at his having tossed both sets of keys to the mercy of the woods. She couldn't leave if there were no keys, after all, and he loathed himself for thinking it.

She was still looking at him expectantly. He quickly shook his head, gesticulating toward the brush and dearly hoping he hadn't projected the guilt thick in his veins.

"Damn," she groused, dropping the hand she'd used to point and lifting it to her mouth instead. Running the edge of her thumbnail along her upper lip she studied the car. "Well, I guess we could just get it down the road a ways…"

He blinked, the lash of self-condemnation easing beneath his sudden confusion. What was she talking about?

Approaching the driver's side of the car she pulled open the door and bent to poke her head inside. A muted noise of satisfaction emerged a moment later, and Jason found himself rounding the front of the metal beast to peer over her shoulder, part curious, part in trepidation, as Whitney bent one knee and slid into the seat.

There were two levers of some kind in the center panel between the seats. She reached for the one farthest from the dash, gripping and pulling it into an upright position with a quiet mechanical _screeck._ Leaning forward, she braced one hand against the steering wheel and reached around to her back pocket and extracted the little knife he'd left for her.

The sight of it elicited an unexpectedly complex surge of emotion from him. Pleasure that she had accepted the gift, contentment that she was not helpless as she had been, possessive satisfaction that startled and frankly scared him in its intensity.

Slipping it from the sheath, Whitney lowered the blade to the panel beside the second lever, fitting the sharp tip to something he couldn't quite see over her bent head. There was a quiet snap of plastic, and she put the knife away. Then she gripped the lever, the slender muscles in her arm taut with strain as she wrenched it backward with an unpleasant metallic grinding noise from whatever mechanism she was forcing into pace against its will.

He watched her, fascinated. He knew very little about cars, though he'd found them interesting as a child. He'd had a great deal of time to while away over the years. An inquisitive and lonely child, he'd found ways to occupy himself that had often included taking things apart and figuring out how they worked before putting them back together – sometimes successfully, but more often not. There were so many questions he wanted to ask her about what she was doing. Bypassing the starter which normally required a key, obviously, but how and why and how did it work?

Only in the wake of his curiosity did it occur to him what this activity meant; that she knew a way to start the car without the keys. That she meant to use it, meant to leave.

"Got it!" she crowed, evidently victorious. The lever had slipped into place, shifting down along the panel by about four inches, and she was beaming happily up at him. "If I steer," she added next, "can you push this thing back out to the road? We won't be able to get it far enough away to really hide it, but that's ok."

He stared at her, once again thrown by the lack of cohesion between what he expected of her and the words she spoke. It took him an embarrassingly long time to understand, and when he did it was with a lingering flare of disbelief.

She didn't mean to drive away. She wanted…she wanted to _hide_ the _car._

As his mother would have said: what on God's green earth was going on?

~/~

Whatever Jason had been expecting her to say, it hadn't been asking him to help her remove the cruiser from the crime scene. Which was understandable. She'd been half a breath away from telling him that she was so deep in this already that she might as well dive the rest of the way, but she'd bitten her tongue instead.

Surprised by her request as he had been, Jason didn't waste much time in proving that he could, indeed, push the whole entire car on his own. She had suspected he could, but the confirmation made her downright giddy as she sat in the driver's seat and did her job of steering them up a long-ass gravel driveway lined by trees.

She wished she had a way to start the darn thing, but while forcing a dead car into neutral was a skill she had acquired out of necessity she had not happened upon the need to learn how to hotwire, and she was wise enough to concede that any attempt was more likely to cause more damage – and possibly some to herself in the process. Plus, when someone came investigating they would sure as shit be able to tell what had happened by looking. And she wasn't keen on spreading even more fingerprints in places she wouldn't remember to clean up.

At the very least they could push it down the road. She hoped to do so back toward town in the hopes of making it look like the officer had never made it to the house, although she had no way to know which way that was with how turned around she now was. Either way, so long as they could eliminate any signs tying the location and the car together, she was reasonably confident that would be enough.

Once all four tires cleared the gravel onto pavement Jason paused, not tired, simply seeking direction. She had wanted to get to the road, after all. Cracking the door open she leaned her head out and urged: "let's keep going a ways." Immediately he hunkered back down and the momentum continued.

They kept going like that for a while, and Jason never let up even for an instant, evidently not needing to rest. She was almost tempted to let him keep going just to see how far he could get – a silly, purely selfish idea based part in the scientific curiosity of it and mostly in girlish delight. She chewed at her lip, trying not to think about how much money she would have paid to watch him do it with his shirt off as she shifted the wheel to ease the car toward the left side of the road.

She felt the motion of the car slow beneath her, saw Jason's head lift in the rear-view mirror, mask crosshatched by the grating separating the backseat.

Cracking the door a second time she called, "it's ok, keep going."

He obeyed, but not without reluctance. The closer she steered them toward the edge of the road the slower he went until they were creeping along like a lethargic caterpillar.

Once the nose of the car began to tip she was grateful for his caution. The slope from pavement into the forested edge was steeper than she had realized, and she quickly braced herself, gripping the wheel and the grab handle above the door as the car pitched forward, gaining a faint, rolling burst of speed in the instant before it smacked into a sturdy old tree with a crunch.

" _Oof…"_

Her wince was reflexive, a response to the shuddering flex of the metal around her, the burst of glass that was one headlight cracking. The impact had been paltry – nothing near what it would have been had she been actually driving. The speed limit out here had been fifty-five, which of course would be considered a loose suggestion rather than a rule somewhere so remote and jump by at least ten ticks on the speedometer, easy. And if she'd been going sixty, sixty-five, she would have gone careening through the windshield and shattered skull and spine against the broad trunk in front of her. Fortunately, she had not been.

The car was wedged against the tree at a near-perfect forty-five degree angle, forcing her to maintain her grip on the grab handle to keep from smushing into the steering panel. Switching hands, she grappled for the door latch, pleased that it, at least, was stull perfectly functional. Gravity aided her in pulling the slab of metal open, but it was not so helpful where it concerned her getting out. The ground sloped dramatically, and combined with the uneven earth and the hindrance of trying to clamber out of something while also trying to stay relatively upright was a struggle.

She was attempting to use the door frame as leverage to heave herself up and out when Jason appeared at her side, one foot planted firmly against the incline, eyes flicking down her form in the way she recognized as a cursory check for injury as he reached for her. His hand cupped her elbow, allowing her arm to turn and grip him for balance, which she did, wrapping her fingers around the thick column of his forearm below the bend.

He steadied her as she climbed awkwardly from the vehicle, free hand going to her back when she scrambled back up the slope to the road; and it was just her _back_ , barely low enough to be called her waist, yet she felt the gentle pressure all the way down to the tips of her fingers and toes.

It seemed he wasn't afraid to touch her again. At least not enough to keep him from helping her as he had before. That was good. She hadn't managed to work up a good fret about it yet, but she was glad to know she might not need to.

She turned back to survey their handiwork as Jason scaled the steep incline in two long strides.

"Well," she mused, cocking her head to the side, "no one's going to look at that and think it crashed naturally."

She saw him look from her to the car and back to her out of the corner of her eye. Tilting her head a bit more she met his gaze and smiled.

"But that's ok. It doesn't have to be convincing, just confusing."

Jason just looked back at her, not appearing to follow. In fact, she was pretty sure he'd been sporting the same set of tiny frown lines at the corners of his eyes since she had asked about the missing keys. Poor man. It seemed all she did lately was confuse him.

Knowing he would follow she headed back the direction they'd come, following the bend onto the driveway and making her way back to the house. Sure enough, she heard a second crunch of gravel after her.

So he wasn't as quiet on gravel. Or maybe he was letting her know he was there? Either way, her lips curved at the corners in answer.

He passed her when she paused at the bike, so it was to his back that she posed the question.

"Would it be ok if my brother comes back to pick this up? I'm pretty sure he has a spare key. I can let him know when I meet him…"

Jason stiffened, the tension rolling down from his shoulders, looking almost the way nausea felt during the seconds right before vomiting. His steps faltered, his body stilling the way a predator's did, as if determining how to respond to a threat.

That was unexpected.

He must have heard her say it, must have understood her. Had he thought she'd merely meant it as placation, that she'd lied to get Clay to leave? Was it the thought of her leaving that had elicited this response, or just the mention of Clay? Did he not intend to let her go? After all, he'd made no promises that night, and her increase in freedom had not been a guarantee that he would be keen to let her leave. He would have had perfectly sound reasons for believing it unwise. Reasons she couldn't argue with, and wouldn't, if that was his decision.

She spent the tense moment with her eyes locked to the back of his head, so focused that his sudden movement almost made her jump. He angled his head slightly to one side, the fine, thin wisps of pale hair sliding over his collar as he directed a tight, terse nod over his shoulder at her before resuming walking toward the porch.

In spite of having hoped for it, his acceptance shocked her. But there was no mistaking that nod: intentional, direct. He could have been clearly only by turning to look at her, and yet she thought she knew why he hadn't – perhaps couldn't.

Probably for the same reason her heart felt like it was being clutched in a too-tight fist.

He went straight to the body, making short work of wrapping it securely in the burlap like a gigantic burrito (inappropriate analogy, much?) and slinging it over a shoulder – which he did while standing at the same time. Whitney indulged in a quick gawk. Sure, the boy she'd briefly glimpsed had been slight, probably smaller than her. But still. Who did that? Who did that with grain or feed or _anything_ , let alone a goddamn _body_?

Giving herself a rough internal shake, she approached the stoop, examining the blood marking the porch and the door cracked open on its hinges. The stains were much larger up close. She could make out the gouge in the solid wood of the door, made, she would guess, by the blade currently at home strapped to Jason's thigh. The scored mark was surrounded by an aurora of blood and…bits of something more solid that she was pretty sure were brain matter but abjectly refused to examine further. Too high on the door to have belonged to the skinny kid, whose skull had still seemed intact from what she'd seen, confirming her theory that there had been multiple casualties.

Well.

She was in it now.

"I can work on this while you do that," she told him, indicating first the stains pooled at her feet then the body draped over his shoulder.

He shrugged with the other, appearing bemused. _If that's what you want._

"What do we have to clean with?"

Digging in a coat pocket, he extracted and proffered a handful of rags, wrinkled and smelling faintly of pine sap.

"No, I mean—we have to wipe all this down with bleach and…" She stopped, noticing the look he was giving her, curious and politely puzzled. "So the police can't trace anything?"

Puzzlement gave way to a distinct lack of concern. Jason shrugged, clearly unbothered by the prospect of being traced back to what had happened here, probably because he never had been before. Everyone that lived within a hundred-mile radius of the camp knew what it meant when someone went missing or turned up dead in these parts, including law enforcement. She knew for a fact the cops in the area didn't even take missing persons cases but for rare exceptions – something she'd thought weird and shitty upon learning it. She got it now.

But while that was all well and good, regardless of the fact that the house was within said radius, the owners clearly were not residents enough to know. Simply that they'd kept their property here said as much. And wealthy people accustomed to getting their way with no concept or acceptance of local understandings were not going to react the way locals did.

Now, how to explain that…

With a sweep of her hand she indicated the blood, the body, the bike. "How often are you doing this in people's houses?"

He didn't answer, just waited for her to continue.

"You don't, do you? You stick to the camp unless someone forces you to leave, which doesn't usually happen because you're good at your job, and everyone here knows better than to want to mess with that. Right. Well, whoever lives—lived here is obviously on the other side of rich. If there's family, they'll push the cops hard to find an answer. What if someone comes this time?"

Now he just looked like he was listening to humor her.

And now she was annoyed.

 _Fine._

"Oh, just—" she grumbled at him, snatching the rags from his hand. "Move," she snapped, pushing roughly at his arm until he stepped aside, clearing her way to the door.

Stubborn, infuriating, gigantic, sexy _idiot._ If he wasn't going to worry about a perfectly reasonable threat then _she_ would.

* * *

 **NOTES:**

So…hi!

Yes, I'm still alive, and yes, I'm still writing – never fear. I said I would finish this story and so help me, I will. The delay on this was due to a combination of being stupid busy and Jason and Whitney being a pair of problem children who did not want to cooperate. There's another chunk of un-deep-edited material at the last third because I didn't want to make you all wait any longer.

I didn't plan on ending this chapter here, but my estimation of my own wordiness was ridiculously off and its already longer than I thought it would be. So, bonus, longer chapter. Second bonus, I'm already writing the next one. Anti-bonus, I feel like this one is a bit boring. :/ Sorry about that. It's sloooooooooooww going on this struggle bus, folks. Next one should be worth it.

Once again, thank you so incredibly much to you, my readers, for all of your love through my nonsense and real life bullshit. My appreciation for you is undying. Every comment I get from you is like a literal dose of serotonin and I swear to god it spurs my writing like said doses would. There's a couple of you I haven't heard from in a while, and I hope you are doing ok. Know that I'm thinking about you.

I love you guys.

Until next time!


	19. Fire in the Water

**Chapter 19  
** Fire in the Water

~/13/~

The door had been left open – the people once inside clearly having prioritized fleeing into the night rather than securing the living space – and Whitney smacked a palm against the heavy wood to shove it out of her way as she stormed inside. He could hear her muttering to herself from the porch, the clatter of cabinets opening and banging closed.

She was clearly agitated, the swing in her mood hinted by the way she'd snapped at him to move, the terse, shortness of her movements. He knew it was due to a dissatisfaction in how he'd responded to her cautions about the owners of the house and law enforcement and needing to clean far more thoroughly than he ever did as a rule, which had given way to frustration. Far from warding him away, however, it centered something in him.

There was a strange, almost everyday kind of normalcy about it, though it had never been normal for her to be annoyed with him. Perhaps that was it; that she would show annoyance here indicated that she wasn't concealing it in regard to...other situations. Just having her near again cleared his head in a way that didn't fully make sense to him, for her nearness also now drove him to an intense level of uncontrollable distraction. He didn't so much mind her temper. She was never mean, never hurtful. Even when she'd shoved at him it had been a soft thing, more flustered than serious, and obviously not founded on the intent to hurt him.

She had never wanted to hurt him, not even in the beginning. It wasn't in her nature. He was not above admitting that this worried him on occasion.

When she emerged after a moment more spent in a silence broken by a rattle of plastic and a muffled huffing exhale, she emerged, arms laden with a deep cooking pot, a large plastic jug full of clear liquid, and scrub brush that looked like it had come from a bathroom. There was a brand new pack of kitchen sponges stuffed into the pot along with the rags she snatched from him, which she dumped unceremoniously to the grass. She had bound her hair up with one of these, the ragged scrap of old bedsheet folded about her head and tied at the crown so that the copper strands were tucked away.

Hefting the pot in one hand, she followed along the side of the house until she came to the external water faucet meant to attach to garden hoses and the like and began filling the metal dish with water. Once done with that, she returned to the porch and knelt, seizing the jug between her hands and making to open it.

It was either brand new and therefore unopened, or whoever had closed it last had done so well enough to create a hindrance, for she struggled quite a bit, the knuckles of both hands going white and strain pulling all the way up her shoulders until her entire upper body vibrated with a fine tremor.

"Oh for—you motherfucking son of a.. _.shitbiscuit_ ," she hissed through teeth clenched tight in her mouth.

He felt his eyes widen, both amused and fascinated. He'd heard plenty of foul language before, and none of the words she'd used were new to him, exactly, but he'd never heard her curse quite like that before. The odd word now and then, but not so many strung together like that and not the one that began with _F._ He didn't actually know what it meant, only that it was particularly foul and that to have said it, she must be quite frustrated.

As if privy to his thoughts, she cast him a swift sidelong glance, muttering a sheepish: "sorry" as if in penance for causing him offense, even though the outburst had not been directed at him.

He was not offended. There were far worse things in the word than bad words. Words could be weapons, he understood that, but they were ethereal things, and could only harm if one let them, and there were only a few specific words that still had that kind of power over him.

Once again she wrenched at the cap of the jug. Spots of color had appeared bright and high at her cheeks, a rosy pink flush that seemed to spread down as he watched, creeping down her neck and lower. He felt a curious urge to tuck his fingers beneath the collar of the shirt and pull it back to see just how far down the color reached. Not that he would ever dare do such a thing, and it wasn't just out of fear of drawing her current temper alone.

With a sharp, final twist and a grunt of effort the cap came free with an irritable snap of: " _jesus..._ " His next inhale assailed him with the potent, burning stench of bleach, and he coughed, blinking against the reek. He watched, at once curious and somewhat baffled, as she dashed the liquid over the stains upon the stoop and began to scrub at it with the brush.

It was unnecessary. She shouldn't have bothered, and he should not have allowed her to dirty her hands with the death he had caused. But at that moment the idea of stopping her seemed akin to sticking his hand in the mouth of an extremely aggravated bear.

What experience did she have with cleaning up after corpses? Was it knowledge related to what she knew about anatomy, the way bodies themselves worked, or things she'd learned at her work in the clinic – whatever it was? He surmised so, but it seemed wrong to equate her with such knowledge for all the confidence she seemed to have about it.

"This is going to take a minute."

She did that sometimes; shape her tone so that it altered the meaning of the words she used. Sometimes the changes evaded him, but he understood the terse slant to interpret a _minute_ to mean a _long time._ He wasn't sure if she said it because she wanted him to remove himself from the vicinity because she was still annoyed or simply to stop hovering, but he took the opportunity to follow her initial suggestion to deal with the body while she was otherwise occupied. Clearly he needn't concern himself with the possibility that she might wander off and get herself hurt. Not when she seemed so intent on her self-assigned task.

He didn't really understand the reason or vehemence behind her frustration. He grasped her aim – to clean up as he usually might, with simply more thoroughness then he deemed necessary – but no one was going to come looking. He dealt with the bodies, the things they carried with them, and the worst of the obvious mess, and the curious or passersby steered clear.

It was that she had made no secret of her disdain for his callus treatment of life, and it was a disdain he respected. She was a healer, after all, learning the ways of preserving life – the utter opposite of himself. So why help him remove and hide a police officer's car? Why tidy up after the carnage she so clearly recognized as such. And why be so meticulous? Why worry so that someone _just might_ come looking? He might have thought it worry on his behalf, that she was doing it to protect him...but that was so unlikely that he dismissed it out of hand immediately, and then reconsidered.

He recalled the way she had observed their handiwork from the roadside, studying the car wedged between slope and tree trunk, and declared it satisfactory. She had smiled, soft lines forming at the outer corners of her eyes and mouth as if in the telling of a joke. Not quite sharing in a game, but something fun. She hadn't gotten defensive until he had dismissed her spoken concern with a shrug, and then she had bristled and snapped like an angry cat.

 _Was_ it because she felt protective? He thought it might be. And if that was so, it meant she was setting aside her own moral disapproval of his actions, going so far as to insert herself into them, for the sake of ensuring nothing bad happened to him as a result of them.

How far they had come. A week, two weeks ago her choice would likely not have been the same. Neither would his.

There was a light, delicate flutter high in his stomach, as though several small, winged things had taken up residence in the space between it and his lungs. It wasn't an anxious feeling, as he initially assumed it to be, but rather something else, something joyous. Delight, maybe even elation. At first it felt dangerous, the soaring swell of pleasure at a thought he never would have entertained before, and it wasn't until he made it back to his childhood house that he remembered exactly why such a seemingly positive thing could be a danger to him.

The body he disposed of in the tunnel behind the heavy metal door with the others, and if he was a little more careful about untangling the loose limbs from the burlap than he usually would have been, it was unconscious – unthinking and unintended. He meant simply to head back, or perhaps to stop in the kitchen for anything he could find that might be of help to Whitney's enthusiastic cleaning efforts. He found himself, however, in his own bedroom, standing before the bureau and staring down into the topmost drawer at the wallet tucked between rows of neatly folded socks, untouched for almost two decades.

It had been during his purging of the campsite she and her friends had erected that he'd found it; bright yellow, marred with the odd scuff mark, made from some kind of imitation leather. It had fallen from the pocket of a bag he'd begun to rifle through for items of use, and it would have gone ignored but for the cards that had spilled from its folds in a rainbow of colored plastic slivers. He had grumbled in his silence, irritated by the nuisance. In bending to gather them up he had come upon one printed with the face of the girl he'd chained in the tunnels, realizing that the wallet, and therefore the bag, must belong to her.

He didn't now remember his reasons for keeping it, or for stowing it here rather than with the larger bag tucked under the little bedside table. Or for not disposing of it with the rest of the detritus she and her companions had left, for that matter. He was glad of the decision now. Wallets were important; they contained money – although he had seen none – and other vital adult things necessary for survival in the world outside of the woods. She would need it if she was intent on leaving, which evidently she was.

He had thought...well, Jason didn't know what it was he'd thought. She had been very clear, painstakingly so, and perhaps he could attempt to blame the strain from the rest of the night or the battle he had waged with the demands of the oath he'd made and subsequently broken, but he had heard her well and clearly.

 _"You know the gas station along the highway? Meet me there in three days and I'll explain."  
_  
She had been trying to dissolve the conflict, to separate them so that they didn't keep tearing at each other – so that he didn't tear her brother apart. But they had not been empty words. She had meant every one of them, and just as she had fulfilled her promise to stay with him that night, she intended to keep this one, too. She always had.

So why had her mention of it via the request about the motorcycle elicited surprise in him? Why had it felt like she had struck him over the head with a cudgel?

It shouldn't have.

By his approximation of her count, they were little more than halfway through the second of those three days, which meant the morning after next she would go, find her brother at that gas station, and there was every likelihood that she would not come back.

Oh, who was he trying to fool? She was never coming back. It didn't matter what he did or didn't do – it never had. She had no reason to stay, or else not enough of one. Even if she viewed him fondly enough to want to keep him safe it wasn't enough to tear her from her own world forever. And perhaps that was as it should be. He didn't want to imprison her here like a bird in a cage, he didn't want to cause her sadness or resentment or pain. She had family – living, _breathing_ family – and he would not keep her from them. Such a loss was not one he would wish on any being, her least of all.

For the first time since stowing it away he folded the wallet open, gingerly thumbing through the contents until he found the particular card he sought: the license with her picture. He peered down at it, noting the little inaccuracies which marked it as old. Her hair a bit shorter than it was now, her face a little bit rounder. She looked tired too, as though she'd been shaken awake from the midst of sleep to take it, but she was smiling.

The pad of his thumb smoothed over the tiny plastic-coated photograph as he contemplated. He would give the wallet back to her, along with the bag in which he'd found it. But this...this he would keep. He could not keep her there if she didn't choose it, but he could keep this little piece of her – the image of her face to keep the memory sharp, though he doubted he would need the aide.

Folding the wallet closed he tucked it back inside the drawer, slipping the bit of plastic into the inner left breast pocket of his coat before he turned to the door.

She was still working when he got back. Fine tendrils of hair were escaping from the edge of the rag by her temples, and one leg of her shorts was dark with water. The worst of the stain at the stoop had been washed away until only a faint shadow of it remained. Now she was scrubbing at the door, alternating between pressing bleach into the grain of the wood with a sponge and scrubbing with water from the pot. He was glad to note that she had unearthed a pair of thick rubber gloves from somewhere, which made him less inclined to worry about what the bleach might do to her skin. She didn't appear to be having much trouble with the blood, but that might have been due to her proclivity as a healer, and possibly sheer stubbornness in her drive to conceal the evidence of the carnage he'd wrought.

He had allowed her to come along to ensure she remembered what he truly was, but now, at the likely success of that endeavor, regret was a bitter thing filling his mouth. She probably wouldn't take back her words, but she didn't need to. Not after this.

Deciding it would be better not to disturb her, he circled around the side of the house to the woodpile. He had already dealt with the body of the dark-skinned boy, but having left it untouched for so long had had consequences.

Blood had soaked into a good third of what had been a neat stack of wood before he'd turned it into an executioner's block. He wasn't sure how Whitney would have had him deal with it, but he figured leaving it was not going to fly. Not if she came back and saw it. So he spread the burlap upon the ground and gathered the bloodied pieces into it. He would carry it to a point deep in the woods and leave it there to rot away when the autumn rain came. That should be enough, he thought.

As he added the last few pieces to his pile he eyed the ax where he had left it upon extricating it from the wreckage of the boy's rib cage. It was a good blade, sturdy, well made and with a heft to it that he'd never come across in any of the camping gear was he usually left with. It had thrown beautifully. He decided he would take it with him when it came time to leave, but for the moment he folded up the bloodied firewood and headed for the trees to find a suitable place to stow it. He ended up dumping the lot of it into a caved-in stretch of the mine tunnels close to the edge of the camp border, tossing a good amount of dirt and forest detritus after it, thoroughly masking the signs of anything outside of the completely organic aside from the tunnel itself to any unlikely passersby. Doubling back around the eastern edge of the house, he picked up the ax and carried it back to the porch.

Whitney glanced over at him, pausing ever so slightly in the midst of forcing bleach into the gauge his machete had left in the door with what appeared to be a poultry baster. He experienced a moment of admiration for her ingenuity, yet did not miss the way her eyes followed the ax as he lowered it to the ground until they were ready to leave. It wasn't fear, she knew he wasn't going to hurt her. But he could tell she was studying the weapon and imagining – or perhaps trying not to – in what horrible way he had used it to end another person.

Bringing her gaze back up to his face she said, "I'm pretty much done here."

The worst of her temper appeared to have run its course, for her tone had leveled out. Not that he had taken it personally, he understood she hadn't been truly angry with him, only worried. He remembered his mother behaving similarly when Jason had done something particularly dangerous such as climbing too high, even if he didn't fall, because he might have and might next time and she was afraid of that happening.

"Is there anything else you touched? Did you go inside?"

A chill ran down his spine as if from a brush of icy fingertips, the question sticking in the back of his own throat like black, viscous bile, forcing him to focus on the one body he hadn't been able to bring himself to go near again. Hardly the most violent or gory of the night's kills, but the worst nonetheless.

He hesitated, not wanting to lie, but very much not wanting to answer either. Forcing himself to nod was like snapping a dislocated shoulder back into place, crunching agony followed by swift, painful relief that would continue to ache and fester for days to follow, but he did it.

There were a number of reasons why he didn't want her near the bodies, the primary being that it felt wrong to subject her to them. It was especially so for this one, due to reasons which made his insides squirm to look back on. Killing in general did not shame him, even in the face of her displeasure, but this one...this one did.

By the time it occurred to him that it might be better to retract his answer – though exactly how he might go about that escaped him – she was already moving inside, cleaning supplies gathered in her artificial-purple gloved hands.

"Where?" she questioned, and without even thinking about it he pointed up to the ceiling, only feeling the sharp twist of alarm after she had started off across the cluttered room.

Once inside, he could more easily gauge the location of the bathroom in conjunction with his recollections of the external layout. He knew at a glance up the darkened stairwell that the bathroom was right at the top of the stairs, which was bad luck, and that by what he knew of Whitney meant it would be the first room she tried. He would not be able to deter her now. Her mind was set, determined to fix the problem laid out before her; and while it might have been based in slightly selfish reasons, he would _not_ have her burdened with the sight of that dead girl.

He lurched after her, taking the stairs two at a time and heaving himself forward to slap his right palm flat against the door jamb just as she twisted the knob and began to pull.

Her chin jerked up at the sound right next to her face, her eyes a little wide, but she seemed more curious than startled and let go, seemingly by reflex. Her eyes dropped to his hand, the rigid set of the bones and tendons there, then flicked to the door.

"Oh," she said on a quiet exhale, stepping slowly back from him and the bathroom, clearly having put together what he wanted and why. "I'll—wait out here."

She meandered a little ways down the hall, giving him plenty of space, and he allowed himself to release the breath he had been unconsciously holding.

The bathroom door didn't open easily, as though it had been barred from inside. It took him some maneuvering to get it open and squeeze himself inside all while keeping the corpse collapsed at its base concealed, but he finally managed, and pressed the door shut behind him.

The girl lay in a bedraggled heap upon the tile; death-white under gold hair and silky blue nightclothes. Gravity and the force of her own weight had caused her flesh to give until she had eventually slipped from the piece of antler upon which he had impaled her. The deep, dragging gouges in her back were evidence enough to confirm it. There was blood on the floor, and some on the rack where he'd hung her, but the room was relatively clean which was interesting. She must have mainly bled internally.

She looked...harmless. So small and weak and insignificant. It was difficult to imagine such a little thing could be capable of instigating the kind of profound terror that she had produced in him. He understood more solidly now that what had happened to him that night had had little to do with her. She had been an indirect catalyst, nothing more. And now as he looked down at the crux of something that had changed him irrevocably forever, he felt nothing. No rage, no disgust, no unease. Just the cold, hollow emptiness he had always felt before.

He wrapped her up in towels first, using the thick, plush ones hanging on the bar adjacent to the tub in the hopes of concealing the shape of her, of more securely containing her limbs and hair. It might have been a bit on the paranoid side, but the burlap occasionally gaped or slipped, and he couldn't risk that happening now, with this body. And perhaps it was a bit strange to think that way, as if a glimpse of this girl would drive Whitney away whereas having witnessed the brutal death of another two nights ago had not. He supposed it was his own shame that drove the instinct to hide it, though he didn't know if he could have pinpointed exactly what the shame was for. Nor did he want to. It was enough simply being forced to handle her again, regardless of whether he was repulsed now as he had been or not.

When he exited the tiny room it was with the blond girl's body slung over an elbow, wrapped so tightly that he doubted tossing her off a cliff-face would do much more than ruffle a few folds.

Whitney was still standing a few yards down the hall, waiting – just as she'd said she would – while giving him plenty of space. He expected her to be wary of approaching, of coming so close to a dead body, but when he propped the door wide and gestured for her, she just hefted her supplies and strode right in, sparing not so much as a glance for the shape he held.

She peered around, taking stock of the blood on the floor as she stepped carefully around it and of the dirty brown smudges beneath the window. He hadn't noticed those before, but once he saw them he knew precisely where they'd come from: the soles of his shoes where he'd dug his feet into the floor in effort to ground himself, separate himself (unsuccessfully) from what had been happening. That he would have removed even before, and he considered inching back inside and doing so had Whitney not planted herself firmly in the center of the space, clearly taking over.

"Did you touch anything? Sink counter, shower curtain? A wall?"

Jason shook his head.

"Anything coming up?" she added, "the banister, or—did you use the handle, or—"

Her gesture toward the doorknob dropped as he held up a hand to interrupt her. He shook his head pointedly, then pointed to the window, watching as she turned her head to look.

"You opened the window?"

She glanced back at him for his answer, and frowned when he shook his head again. He hadn't touched the window itself – not with his hands, anyway, which seemed to be what she was mostly concerned about, next to the blood. He mimed climbing with one foot and his free hand, somewhat amused by the completely blank set of her face as she clearly did not follow. Frowning, she raised an arm to swipe at her forehead with the few inches of bare forearm which showed above the top of the rubber glove, turning back to the window as she did. She stared at it for a few seconds, her arm stilling there, pressed to her brow.

He could tell the exact moment when she put it together; that he meant that he hadn't come in through the door at all. Her spine straightened by an almost infinitesimal amount, her arm dropping back to her side a split instant before the " _oh..._ " left her mouth.

She glanced back, tilting her chin until it nearly brush her shoulder rather than fully turning. For a moment she simply eyed him, worrying her lower lip between little white teeth in a way that seemed almost nervous, but he didn't _think_ actually was. He was strangely captivated by the sight of it and completely clueless as to why.

Well...no, that wasn't entirely true anymore. There was no longer a gaping crevice in the part of his mind but a scaffolding of possibility and idea, the what it was about her mouth that drew his eyes as if he had become comprised of iron filings and she were magnetically charged.

Her gaze dropped, skimming lightly along his form as if taking his measure. She was looking at him as if she was imagining him doing what she'd realized he must have: pulling himself up onto the roof to slip in through the window that should have been too small for him, and there was a strange sort of wonder to it, a hint of curiosity, of fascination.

It was fleeting at first, barely even a cohesive thought, but once it flitted through his head he couldn't shake it. Because he had seen her look at him that way before, brief flashes here and there, and again in the lodge kitchen when he'd been too tense to read and standing too close to catch. Because all of a sudden he had the impression that she was looking at him the way he often caught himself looking at her. Admiring, _longing._

He couldn't get her words out of his head – the words she had struggled to get out properly, and not completely – nor the look on her face, the faint flush in her cheeks. Couldn't shake the feeling that everything he'd thought about the encounter next to the sink had been completely wrong, and that she had wanted him to stay for reasons beyond just for the sake of her own kindness or the friendship they had stitched together.

Was it possible that she...

"Ok then."

The words left her slowly, like a breath let out in measured increments to manage pain. To hear it made his skin prickle, a visceral thrum of awareness rippling through his body as if he'd become a piano string and her voice the hammer calling it to sound.

"Well," she added with sudden, sharp emphasis that implied she was giving herself a head-clearing shake, "no one's going to look at that when there's a huge fucking gouge in the door downstairs—sorry," she apologized with a self-chastising grimace, "I like that word today, I guess."

Jason frowned behind his mask, not understanding why she seemed to feel the need to apologize. He could understand that the language itself was impolite – socially speaking – and he was pleased in part that she didn't want to offend him, that was a positive thing to be sure. But he didn't want her to feel like she had to watch her mouth around him if it didn't come naturally. He had always rather liked that she spoke her mind and had told him repeatedly to go to hell rather than do nothing but cower; and for all he suspected his mother might have disapproved, he liked the way she talked, profanity or no. He liked her _voice_ , and whatever she chose to do with it he would absorb and gladly.

He waited until she looked at him to shrug his lack of concern, and she tilted her head in question.

"You don't mind me swearing?"

He shook his head again.

"I guess I just assumed..." She let the sentence fade to its death in favor of staring at him for a moment, suddenly contemplative. "I wasn't actually mad at you before," she said softly, "you know that, right?"

It was his turn to stare, not caught unawares by the question so much as what it meant that she'd asked it. Had she been worrying she had hurt him by snapping? His nod was assertive, hoping to communicate that yes, he understood, and to reassure her. It seemed to work, for a small smile appeared at the corner of her lips as she nodded back.

"Ok. You go on, I'll deal with this." Decisively she pointed down to the floor, indicating the general state of the room.

Taking her cue, he backed out of the doorway and made for the stairs, pausing only when he heard her call out after him.

"And don't even _think_ about touching anything else on the way out, you big moose!"

Was it possible to light up from the inside out? According to the heady mix of delight and trepidation which fluttered about in the pit of his belly just then, Jason rather thought it was.

~/~

Whitney was disassociating.

Big time.

She knew she was: she kept cycling violently back and forth between horror over what she was doing and an almost feverish sense of righteousness in her decision. Honestly, she might have been more surprised at herself if it hadn't been apparent that while she would probably never be ok with murder (she'd held onto _that_ at least), she could find a tolerance of it in Jason's stark distaste for the act he had inadvertently devoted his life to committing. It wasn't so much that she wanted to conceal the evidence of the horrendous events but that she wanted to keep Jason from any potential reprisal.

As abstract and far-fetched as it might have seemed, even the faintest outline of the thought of him caught, locked up in a prison or a psychiatric facility (which, with the amount of death he had dealt out in his day, was the not likely) rendered her lightheaded with worry. He might not be able to die, but if anyone caught him and found that out...would they subject him to experiments? Torture him indirectly to find out the cause? It seemed so dramatic, like something out of a horror sci-fi novel. But it probably wasn't all that unlikely in the event of capture. The thought made her feel like she might vomit up her own insides.

Clearly he didn't fear capture or punishment, and perhaps he had his reasons. But she was not willing to take the chance that he might be wrong, hence the need to disassociate as she doused her latex-gloved hands in blood and bleach.

Not that she actually knew what needed to be done – it wasn't like she had ever cleaned up a crime scene before, or even thought about it. Still, she grasped a little; what could be learned from bouts of insomnia cushioned by late night cold case reruns and logical application of science. She was fairly confident that even if she couldn't clean to the point of perfect sterility, she could at least make it confusing enough for whatever evidence she missed to be useless.

The bathroom was so small that Whitney decided it would be less work just to mop the entire floor; soaking up the tiny pool of blood with a sponge before dousing the spot with bleach and spreading it around until the tile was gleaming wet. She tackled the door next, wiping down the inside surface with a bleach-soaked sponge and eliminating the scattered red-brown flecks marring the immaculate white paint. Then she turned her focus on the piece of raw antler set into it, shaped to form a customized towel or bathrobe hanger – and probably from a kill cousin to the deer head she'd glimpsed displayed in a prominent place above the living room.

This had been the weapon for the murder in this room: a sharp, pronged instrument of death forged from an innocuous piece of decoration. Every prong was bloodied, and she spent a generous moment fretting about how she was going to get it clean. Antler was like bone, wasn't it? And bone was porous. If she set a sponge to it, would the bleach soak in? She wasn't sure, but she couldn't think of anything else to try.

Holding the pot up underneath to catch the mess she pressed the newly-soaked sponge into the prongs, squeezing as she might have around a piece of silverware and hoping it would be enough.

For good measure, she ran the sponge along the window frame, just in case some precocious (or knowledgeable) individual decided to test it. Then she gathered up her supplies and slipped back out and down the stairs.

Back in the living room she tossed some things around, pillows and the like, and relocated the fireplace poker to the couch as though someone had laid it there across the cushions like a small child. She gathered up the dishes left lying about the downstairs rooms and ferried them to the kitchen, neatly stacking them inside and next to the sink – something partying kids would never have done. When she left, she did so through the mudroom, where she spent a few minutes upending a basket of clean towels onto the spotless counter and dumping an entire bottle of liquid fabric softener into the dryer. That last detail she was particularly proud of: let the investigators try and make something of that, if they could!

When Whitney declared herself finished and circled back around to the front porch to make sure she hadn't left anything lying around, Jason was there waiting for her. She had assumed he would leave while she cleaned as he had done before, to relocate the second body to wherever it was he had decided to stow them. But he was right there next to the stoop, body still folded over an arm like he might have carried an overcoat and the double-headed ax cradled loosely in his other hand, masked face tipped up and slightly sideways, as if he had been watching the clouds overhead.

"We can head back now," she said.

Jason's head swiveled, shifting his focus down to her, clearly taking in the pot she still carried, packed with used sponges and the bottle of bleach, the gloves she had peeled off once outside.

"Unless there's somewhere else I need to clean?"

The corners of Jason's eyes creased with his smile at her teasing, and she felt another small stab of relief to see it.

 _"I wasn't actually mad at you before...you know that, right?"_

She had asked because it hadn't occurred to her whether he would be able to tell the difference between general frustration and one aimed at him, and because she had suddenly realized just how snippy she had been with him. He hadn't done anything to deserve it, and she hadn't wanted him thinking that he had.

Evidently he hadn't been bothered. There had been an almost affronted emphasis to his answering nod that almost seemed to say: _well obviously._ And clearly he knew her better than she had given him credit for, or else was just quite adept at reading her moods. Both implied an attention paid to her that was almost more flattering than any he might have directed toward her physically. Attraction was great and all, but taking the time to truly know another person was a mark of a whole other kind of intimacy. Not that that made her stomach-butterflies any less rabid at the prospect of the former.

Jason tipped his chin in the direction of the tree-line and she followed dutifully as he set them on the route back to the camp.

It didn't take very long for the afternoon's activity to catch up with her. She still hadn't quite recovered from the punishment she had subjected her own body to: her feet, calves, and lower back were beginning to ache from all the bending, reaching, walking, and scrubbing. She positively reeked of bleach, which hadn't bothered her so much in the midst of a cleaning frenzy but now was starting to get to her. Plus, her stomach was starting to pinch with the early pangs of hunger, which wasn't helping anything. All she wanted in the world was food and a bath. The one she could acquire, but the other...mother of _god,_ what she would have given for a bathtub.

As a result of all this, she was not as diligent in trailing his steps as she should have been, but she had a sense that even though she was behind him Jason was somehow still keeping an eye on her and would drop everything else to keep her befuddled ass from stumbling headfirst into a pit-trap. Still, she was relieved when he slowed and turned to indicate they had passed into the safer stretch of woods. He nodded forward, a gesture she followed with her eyes to see the dried-out husk of a fallen tree they had passed earlier on the way out.

With the help of the landmark she knew where they were, and felt no compunction about moving forward to walk beside him.

She very much wanted to reach for his hand. The compulsion bit at her, a sweetly sore and nagging thing. She would have obeyed it, too, had the hand in question not been occupied with the ax which gleamed just a little too brightly to not have been quite recently used. Instead, she let her fingers graze his sleeve, pot of used cleaning implements balanced in the crook of her other arm as she gripped the fabric lightly. It was a poor substitute, but it allowed her just a hint of the closeness she'd sought. That she quite desperately wanted.

She had been doing her best not to think too hard about the veiled offer she had made him earlier. There didn't seem to be much point in bringing it up again – she was about eighty-five percent sure she had only managed to perplex him – and that was assuming she could get over her own mortification in order to ensure clarity of intent. At the same time, part of her felt as though she was hovering in the midst of a window that was rapidly closing. Every minute another grain in the hourglass of her life that she would never get back, torn between the fear of wasting it and the terror of action that seemed...beyond her. She was struggling with it, and it was easier not to think about. Easier, safer, yet left her feeling listless and frustrated. And more than a little empty.

Though she wasn't sure if he noticed either way, she held on to his sleeve for as long as she could – until the awkward weight of the pot started to string an unpleasant coil of tension in her shoulder and forced her to let go. After which she trailed along next to him, the ache in her feet and shins dragging at her already sinking mood. She had planned to accompany him to wherever he was headed, but the idea was seeming less and less practical by the second. She needed to eat something, to rid herself of the stench of bleach that was making her head fuzzy, get out of the clothes that were starting to stick to her back and crease uncomfortably under her butt.

Mind made up, she turned to him.

"I'm going to..."

But he was no longer there beside her.

Pivoting, Whitney glanced behind her and found nothing but trees. He had vanished, just like that; clearly having other things to see to. Maybe the things he'd been dealing with before all the chaos of her not-quite-rescue, when he'd reluctantly left her. Or else just didn't want to be around her just now.

Had her putting her nose in his business been off-putting? Probably. And maybe that was for the better.

She stopped by the lodge just long enough to drop off the cleaning supplies she'd liberated (read, _stolen_ ), hork down a can of cold ravioli because she was just hungry and didn't give a damn, and to grab a change of clothes before heading straight for the showers. She didn't linger, hopping beneath the spray for no more the brief few minutes it took to wash off the dirt and sweat and chemicals. The heat had rendered the natural curl of her hair to something of a hectic frizz even under the protection of the rag she'd used to protect it, and to keep from shedding. It was too soon to wash it again, but she had unearthed some baby powder from a box not completely integrated into the anthill-esque puzzle-sculpture that was the tunnel interior, and she made sure to rub some into her scalp to absorb out the excess of oil from working in the heat, all the while shifting her weight from foot to sore foot, bemoaning the lack of a bathtub in which to soak them. And Epsom salts.

Yet while she might not have had either of those things, she did have access to something else: a body of water.

Slipping on the pretty yellow cotton dress was a stark improvement from her sweat-soaked clothes. While not as hot as it had been in the days prior, it was warm beyond her comfort level. Warm enough to make the idea of dunking her feet in the lake seem close to heavenly.

She hadn't set foot on the dock, hadn't even really thought about doing so after those few minutes spent sitting in the shade of one of the nearby trees and looking out on the water as her appreciation of the beauty soured with sad and awful realization. Yet somehow even after that she felt no unease as she slipped her feet from her shoes and set them to the side. No ill-settled hint that the touch of her bare toes to the sturdy old wood of the planks was in some way disrespectful, that she was treading on a grave. The only person who had died at this dock, in this water, had been Jason. And if Jason was up and walking, breathing, feeling, then there could be no grave to desecrate; and if there had been, she suspected Jason would care more that she had put herself within the grasp of his mortal enemy than that she'd set foot on the spot itself.

The grain of the planks was worn smooth and almost satiny, but even the little imperfections there were felt like pebbles wedged into the sole of a shoe. An off-kilter comparison could be made to the _Princess and the Pea_ she thought bemusedly as she held out her arm to balance in compensation for the slight lilt and bob of the dock between her steps and the ebbing, sloshing shift of the water below. She sat at the far end, folding her knees over the side and lowering her unhappy feet into the water with a strangled whimper. Even while warm from hours soaking up sunlight the lake was cool. It was an instant relief, a balm to the sore skin and throbbing tendons whose grumbling subsided within seconds.

She lost track of how long she spent there: feet churning lazily, her head lolled back, eyes closed as she turned her face up to the sun like a flower might have to drink in the light.

Somehow she hadn't really expected to see Jason until maybe the evening, though she had no reason to think it or anything else. But in the moment when she turned her head and happened to see him at the shore, sinking slowly to a cautious crouch just inside the rim of shade provided by the surrounding trees – so close to the thing that had been such a source of pain and terror – it took her more by surprise than perhaps it should have.

He was just watching her, yet she could tell even from the distance that he was remembering the day at the stream and trying to determine whether or not he should be concerned. Would he come after her if so? Would he if she fell in? Judging by the swift, unthinking action he'd taken at the stream she thought she knew the answer, and the idea of the stress it would cause him – whether she fell or not – was enough to encourage her to move.

She had probably spent more than enough time in the sun for the day anyway, considering her lack of sunscreen and the redhead genes from generations not too long past which caused her to burn both quickly and rather badly. But really, she didn't need much excuse to go sit with him.

She traversed the dock more slowly this time, her caution entirely for his sake. It did not escape her notice that he didn't fully sit down until both her feet were completely settled on the silty ground, and that only when she plopped down beside him did he appear to fully let go of the tension he'd been carrying.

"Hi."

He gave the tiny nod she liked to think of his version of _hey_ in reply – the one which never ceased to send a happy little trill through her nervous system. Stupid body (brain?). He didn't seem to have come for anything in particular, didn't seem to want anything other than to be near her, and she found herself smiling at the prospect. It was such a little thing, to be sought after simply for company. Just _company_ , not even conversation or activity. A little thing, but it made her...happy wasn't the word. She wasn't sure if there was a word for it, the at once vague and quite specific intertwining of happiness and contentment and pleasure, both comfortable and the best kind of unsettling

With a sigh, she leaned back until she was lying on the patchy, scraggly summer grass, warm and relaxed from the time spent lazing in the sun like a lizard. She blinked, taking in the lacy green silhouette of the pine branches against a sky so blue that it almost looked fake, as if a filter had been cast over the world around her. One of her own making, perhaps.

Jason was a solid, steady presence beside her, the rhythm of his breathing too quiet to truly hear, but she seemed to feel it all the same. It was soothing, having him there. She felt safe. Truly safe in a way she didn't think she'd ever really felt at any point in her life outside of early childhood, before she'd started to realize just how dangerous the world could be and that parents were not the all-powerful shields she had thought them to be. She knew that were she to close her eyes and drift off to sleep, nothing bad would happen. Nothing would hurt her. Nothing would dare.

Feeling warm and more than a bit sleepy her eyes drifted closed, and she considered doing just that – just for a moment. A nap would definitely not do her any harm, certainly not with Jason there.

She felt him shift next to her, felt the brush of his sleeve against her elbow, eliciting a very faint tingle in the adjoined hand which rested flat against her rib cage. She thought he might have moved a bit closer. Jesus, he smelled good for an undead zombie-ghost: leather and earth after rain, plain, good soap, and the faintest hint of sweat.

Her thoughts stilled, caught and tangled on that last little detail, so insignificant until she really considered it.

She had never seen him sweat before. She _had_ noted the absence of it more than once; that he never seemed to overheat even during the fiercest of hot spells. She had assumed he must just have a strong tolerance for it or that he kept himself cleaner than she had ever given him credit for, but neither had really properly explained away the lack of the particular odor of a man that was quite so active.

After the rapid-healing discovery she might have put it down as a perk of being semi-undead (or whatever). But now she caught it; the unmistakable salt-and-musk tang far more pleasant than she recalled – which was probably more to do with that elusive concept of chemistry she had thought she understood but clearly hadn't than anything else. She had always thought it fascinating how some people could perspire and yet never seem to smell unpleasant, and that there were those who actually seemed to smell nice. It had never occurred to her that the two things might be correlated. But all this was irrelevant. That she could smell it on him was decidedly odd. The heat had never bothered him before, and if it wasn't that, then why...

Something brushed her ankle, the back of a finger skimming tentatively along the faint depression just above the bone, and her eyes snapped open, guided by her surprise. Jason _had_ moved closer. He had angled his body toward hers, leaning his weight into the hand planted against the ground near her shoulder, his face turned down to the place he touched.

A tingling awareness spread through her like ripples upon the surface of water, as though he had put a live wire to her skin, and suddenly all hints of sleepiness had vanished.

It was her _ankle_ for fuck's sake. But it felt like far more than that, far less innocuous. Or innocent. And considering the conversation (stilted though it had been) they'd had earlier in the day, she did not think it unreasonable for it to have struck her that way.

As she turned her head toward him she saw his face tilt, his eyes flicking to her face – gaze seeking hers as if to gauge whether the touch was unwanted. She made the concerted effort to relax, and to be obvious about it, even when every muscle, every inch of her skin tried to pull tight. She had no doubt that if she gave him any fragment of a reason to doubt he would retreat. A good quality, she reminded herself, and admirable one; the mark of a man who was decent, not simply inexperienced.

He swallowed, drawing her eye to the subtle gleam at the base of his throat above the ragged shirt collar. He _was_ sweating, but she would have bet every cent she had ever had to her name that it was because of nerves, not the heat, and that was almost more flattering than even a respectable hard-on had been. Sure, she could elicit that, but to make him _sweat?_ She didn't even know why, but that was a completely different level.

His gaze faltered, and for a moment she thought the nerves had gotten the best of him, that he was going to pull away. Yet as she waited she felt his wrist turn, felt fingertips brush the base of her heel, and something other than worry flooded her – the same breathless anticipation that came right before a kiss.

When he touched her again it was with more surety, confident that he had not misread, and maybe she hadn't confused him before. Maybe he'd understood better than she thought he had. Fingertips slid up along the line of her shin, rough with callus, but so gentle.

How long had it been since he'd touched someone out of something other than anger, before she came along? Was that why he was always so careful with her; not because he feared to break her, but because he was relearning how? It was something of a sad thought, but it was a fleeting sadness, one quickly countered by the fact that regardless of the necessity, he was apparently determined to do it.

His palm curved with the shape of her calf, the back of her knee, seeming completely oblivious to the hair that dusted her skin. She hadn't seen a razor in a month, and the last time she'd shaved had been a week before that. Mike would definitely have teased her about it, but Jason had not been raised on the expectation of beauty standards that required maintenance. He clearly cared about nothing other than that her legs were bare and she was allowing him to touch them.

Thank god for small gifts.

He leaned very slightly closer, and for whatever reason the position was a very stark reminder of just how big he was: literally twice her size with interest. Doing so caused a single strand of fine wheat-pale hair to slip over his jacket collar. It looked oddly stringy, as though it were partially air-dried after having been wet, and suddenly two things stood out to her: the smell of soap was also more pronounced than usual, and he was openly putting his hands to her, not concerned as he had been last night about dirt or grime.

Had he just bathed? Had he made it a point to do so, after having spent so much time handling corpses and cleaning up blood? Was that why he'd vanished so abruptly on the way back? Had he…had he _planned_ this?

A swift pang of delight hit her just as the soft graze of his fingers reached the space above her knee, and she couldn't stop the tremor that passed through her like the heat shimmering over asphalt. She had managed to maintain her stillness up until this point, but no longer. Her other knee bent, unconsciously trying to press her thighs together on some weird, not-entirely-defensive reflex.

It was, unfortunately, enough.

Jason shied back, instantly lifting his hand as though the tiny movement had been alarming as a screech. Yet he was still staring at her, and it took her a second to realize that the reason for the abrupt retreat might not have been solely due to the fact that she'd moved at all, but partly because said movement had caused the hem of her skirt to ride up a few extra inches.

Whatever possessed her in that moment she might never know. But next she knew she was gripping his wrist, drawing his hand down to press his palm back to her skin and holding him there – and while he could have easily broken her grasp if he chose to free himself, she hoped she managed to convey how much she didn't want him to. Then she released him, letting her own hand fall deliberately to the ground and out of the way.

She didn't know how to be any clearer than that.

At first he remained stiff, hand held flat and tense as if waiting to be bitten. He glanced to her face, a lightning quick flash of wary eyes and an uncertain crease of what surely indicated a furrowed brow. Then, after a long moment he let his palm curve, his fingers spread.

His thumb traced a slow, shallow arc along the outside of her thigh. Her neck arched helplessly, her eyelids fluttering. He had no idea the effect it would have, no idea how starved for this particular kind of contact she was – hell, _she_ hadn't even known. It hadn't actually been that long; two months, maybe a little less, she couldn't fully remember. Ellen's illness had put a damper on both her enthusiasm and her short-term memory. All she knew was that it felt like years, and _god_ it felt good to be touched this way again.

His knuckles brushed cotton, pushing her skirt farther up her leg by a fraction of an inch and she bit the inside of her cheek to choke back her whimper at the visceral impact of something so small.

It took everything in her to remain still. To keep breathing. To keep from sitting bolt upright and either shoving out of reach to maintain her own dignity or else pouring herself into his lap like the liquid she seemed to have become.

He could just keep going: drag the hem all the way up until it reached her throat and she would lift her arms to help him slip it over her head.

Wouldn't she just.

There were quite a lot of things she would let him do, and just as many she wanted to do herself. She wanted to shove the coat back from his shoulders, run her hands down his arms, his chest, tuck her fingers under his shirt and feel the heat of his skin against hers. She wanted to hook an elbow around the back of his neck and pull him down over her, or, better yet, push him onto his back, set her knees at either side of his hips and press down.

Her breath left her on a choked half-sigh and Jason went still, hand tightening ever so slightly against her skin. When he drew back, smoothing the soft cotton back down across her thighs, she thought she might cry. But she was not so distraught that she failed to notice his throat work with his swallow as he did, or the way his hand lingered after.

In her admittedly limited experience, men did not tend to be very subtle. They didn't stick around if they weren't interested – and Jason was. _He_ had initiated this, not her. Frankly, that he'd touched her at all had been interestingly assertive after the shock the encounter last night had been. And when she had moved his hand back to her leg he had taken it as permission to do something he'd already _wanted_ to do on his own, through no suggestion of hers.

She had considered that he might decide he wasn't interested in this, that he might not want to engage in this way. This brief exchange had proven that was _not_ the case.

So, why stop? Shyness? More fear of doing something wrong? Or was it that he simply didn't know what to do, either in purpose or possibility. Just because he might have witnessed the occasional pair of idiots fucking in the grass didn't mean he'd taken in the particulars of what precisely was being done. Real sex wasn't like porn; a real voyeur wouldn't be able to see worth shit unless they were really up in the thick of things, and that would have been the farthest thing from Jason's priorities.

Well, he might not know how to go about it, but he wanted to. Maybe this had been his way of telling her that.

And she…she was leaving in little more than a day.

With a smooth, rolling ease Jason stood. He reached for her, intent clear; she put her hand in his and allowed him to pull her to her sand-encrusted feet.

She spent the walk back to the lodge deep in thought. If she went through with this, if she encouraged this, was she leading him on? Was it only that if she intended to leave? _Did_ she intend to leave? She still had no real answer, and for that reason alone she should be putting a stop to this – take her doubt as a sign from the universe to let go, to move on with her life and let him move on with his.

But then, there were a lot of things that Whitney Miller _should_ have done in her life, and the proportion of those should-haves to her have-dones was, well…a bit skewed.

He walked with her until the trees thinned, giving way to the sight of the building – the clotheslines still strung along the western end of the clearing – at which point he stopped, indicating that she would go the rest of the way on her own.

She turned to him, tucking windswept hair back behind an ear to keep it from sticking to her cheek.

"This was nice. Not the—you know. This afternoon. It was nice."

She didn't expect to see the shadows cloud his eyes when she looked, nor the lines of concern which formed, indicating the frown she could only suspect and not see, and something in her went cold at the sudden realization that maybe the reason he had stopped hadn't been due to nerves or ignorance, or not entirely. What if it had been something else – some inner demon dripping poison in his ear, hissing that he wasn't enough, that he was undeserving, that he shouldn't allow himself the liberty out of some misguided need to repent for the less than wonderful things he'd done. Not unlike the way he'd extricated himself from her in order to proclaim his hands too dirty, even when it had never mattered before.

If that was in _any_ way true, she couldn't let it stand.

Swapping her shoes to her left hand, she lifted the other, laying her palm against the mask where it shielded his cheek, hoping he could somehow feel her body heat through the neat row of holes. His eyes rose, lovely and wintery, and she smiled.

"See you tomorrow?"

She felt the subtle hitch in his chest, the faint rush of his breath a soft burst of warmth against her wrist. He nodded, slowly, as though in effort not to dislodge her, and the awful chill inside her thawed, hopeful. She'd give him some space for now, but the second he gave her another opening like this she was going to make damn sure he understood that she wasn't just being nice and that he was _not_ undeserving.

"Good night, then."

He was gone by the time she got to the porch and looked back, disappeared like a specter into the early evening.

~/~

Jason barely remembered ridding himself of the blond girl's body. He knew consciously he must have, knew he must have done so in the tunnels as he should have, since the tunnels were where he kept the soap he used to bathe. It was just that it had been so difficult to focus on anything but how fiercely his skin had itched.

Not a tangible itch, not a real one. It had been as though he could feel every individual layer of dirt coating him, and the subsequent, rather ferocious compulsion to be clean had overtaken everything else. So much so that it had all but driven him from Whitney's presence, unable to stand being so near her in such a state.

Only rarely had he ever wished for clothes other than the ones he had. The only reason he had then was that it occurred to him while scrubbing himself down in the middle of the stream that if he had been dirty then they would be too, and washing them now would mean either walking around in wet clothes or else foregoing them altogether. Neither was a viable option, and it was with a pained grimace that he donned his sole set of clothing; better, but only marginally improved.

When he found her again it was at the lake, where she sat out on the far end of the dock, face turned up to the gradually sinking sun and dipping her feet into the water.

He didn't like it. Everything in him was screaming to get to her, to drag her away from the dark, deadly water and to safety. But he didn't. The threat was in his mind: a product half of bad memory and avoidance, and half whatever it was inside him so determined to see her safe whatever the cost to himself. Besides, she was happy there. He wasn't going to disturb her.

He would, however, keep watch. Not because he thought the water was going to suddenly reach out with vine-like tendrils and drag her under, but because…well, because.

He hadn't needed to.

As if having heard him approach she twisted, planting her hands against the dock's edge and pushing herself to her feet – which gave him an unpleasant surge of panic when she leaned slightly forward to do so. She made her way back toward the shore, illuminated by the light reflected from the mirrored lake surface like something not quite real – a piece of sunlight herself in the buttery yellow dress.

"Hi," she greeted as she sat next to him, her skirts pooling around her hips, her face soft and open as if he'd woken her from sleep.

She smiled faintly, arching her spine with a sigh before falling gracefully back onto the grass, her hair wild and gleaming and haloed by the tiny white flowers scattered around them, and _oh,_ but she was beautiful. It almost hurt to look at her.

Her eyes fluttered closed, dark lashes a feathery fringe that didn't quite graze the crests of her cheekbones. He found himself shifting closer, propping himself above her with his left arm to better study her face, the line of her neck interrupted by the faded ribbon, the way the dress draped the softly curving shape of her all the way down to her legs – long and sleek and strong.

It had been his fascination with her legs that might have alerted him to the powerful draw he had developed toward her body were he a little less ignorant. And it had been the precise proportion of her hips and backside which had made it clear that he had looked at her enough to distinguish her from another woman's shape at a glance. Yet somehow for all the looking he must have done to result in that, it seemed he would never be able to look enough to satisfy the craving he had to look still more.

She was so _warm_. The heat called to him, drew him in, but he didn't know what to do with it. All he knew was that he would swear his hands ached for the want to touch her.

With the caution of a man reaching for a snake he extended his hand, slowly, so slowly the moment seemed to last an age. The back of his index finger brushed her ankle, the smooth spot just above the faint protrusion of bone, and though guided by his own will he nearly startled at the contact.

Reflexively he glanced at her face, yet if he had expected her to shrink or start at the sight of him hovering over her she did neither. Rather, she seemed to relax even further into the earth at her back. Her eyes were liquid bright, half-lidded, lips ever so slightly parted as if in expectation. Though expectation of what he didn't know.

But he knew what it made him think of.

He could still recall it – not with the clarity he might have, since at the time he had only noticed in passing rather than actively watched – the backward tilt of her head, the way she had risen up on her toes to make herself taller as the man's body curved down and into her.

He hadn't paid enough attention to recollect details; knew only that their mouths had touched. He was both grateful for and annoyed by this. The more detail he had the more he could learn about her, what she liked, what she might have wanted…which was a truly ridiculous thought to have. As if he were ever going to remove his mask and try to mimic what he'd seen. Even if the idea didn't terrify him as much as it made the skin of his misshapen lips burn with the wistful phantom of a touch not there, it was something he could never do.

Yet not even the bittersweet reality could lock the daydream out of his head, not with the smooth skin behind the bend of her knee under his fingertips.

His hand slid upward still, wrist bending to follow the intricate pathways of tendon connecting the delicate bone of her kneecap. He didn't know what happened then, only that where she had been so still and calm she was suddenly drawn tight as a bowstring, slim figure trembling with a single visceral shudder. Her other leg bent, pressed inward, and he could think of no way to define it but as a curbed reflex to shake him off.

He jerked back, trying to put together what misstep he had made but completely unable to force his brain to work when all he could focus on was that her skirt had slid back, exposing generous inches of skin he had never seen bare before.

He couldn't look away. He knew he should, but it was if he'd been hypnotized and he _couldn't._

Not until he felt her slender fingers wrap around his wrist and pull.

It was not tentative. She was firm, decisive as she pressed his hand back where it had been, her gaze steady on his as she let him go.

Stunned as he was, it took him only an instant to understand that she had very deliberately taken his hand and laid it against her own bare skin, and even he in his self-admitted ignorance and naivety and caution wasn't sure it was possible to misread such an action. And all of a sudden he understood in the space of the single, clarifying glance he shot her that the strange not-quite-fear that had so confounded him was _not_ , in fact, fear at all…but _anticipation._

Had it always been? It must have, because little about it had changed since the first time he could remember noticing it. Maybe there had been a tiny bit of genuine fear there at first, but by the time he could remember catching her watching him with that almost expectant edge, as though she wanted something, the fear had long gone.

He knew right then that he had been right: she _had_ wanted him to touch her in the kitchen last night, just like this. It seemed so obvious now, so blatant, and he might have felt stupid for not having seen it but for how utterly in the dark he had been. Now he was just shocked, and thoroughly captivated.

She was just so impossibly soft, warm and smooth beneath the roughness lining his palms. Not that she seemed to mind it. He stroked experimentally, delighting in the faint shift of muscle beneath his touch, the barely-there twitch of awareness. The way her eyes shuttered and her chin tipped up as if she were baring her throat to him; vulnerable, but with intent, the expression across her face having crossed the elusively-defined anticipation and right into something else. Something that flushed her cheeks and quickened her breath in a way that was entrancing beyond his ability to understand.

He had never been able to grasp the purpose of dresses before; they didn't appear to have any particular function and left the wearer vulnerable. But he thought he understood now, as his hand slid up the supple curve of her thigh. He could follow the skin all the way up to the hip beneath the skirt, completely unobstructed. At least until he got to her underthings.

The thought was a passing one, but his body seized it and clung before his mind could catch up, remembering unbidden how she had looked in the bathroom, skin beaded wet and clutching the shower curtain to her chest – knowing full well she was naked underneath. The desire struck like a rock to his skull. Suddenly all her wanted was her, naked as she had been then. Wanted it so sharply that he was next to dizzy with it.

His hand flexed, an unconscious side-effect of the effort it took to fight the burning in his belly, the coils of greed scraping down the inside of his lungs like claws.

It was too much, too fast. He couldn't breathe, couldn't think.

He forced himself to pull away, to fold the skirt back down over her legs to cut the temptation, trying to reconcile the intensity of his gravitation toward her with the part of his mind currently struggling to remind him just how wrong this was.

 _Why_ in the name of everything good was she letting him _do_ this? Didn't she know that a creature like him didn't belong with something like her? All he would do was soil her, and all she would do was leave him.

But it didn't stop him from wanting her anyway, damn him.

She was quiet as he escorted her to the lodge, thoughtful, shoes dangling from where she held them hooked on her fingers. He tried to do as he had done earlier in the day, maintain a safe distance, try not to let himself linger on the subtle sway in her walk or the fall of her hair, the way it tumbled down about her shoulders, framed her breasts.

 _Just don't look at her._

But he didn't want to stop. He was weak, and he didn't care. If he could have nothing else, he just wanted to look at her. While he still had time.

And yet when he drew his line in the earth and she turned to bestow a smile and a soft word the cloying taste of bitter self-disgust dissolved upon his tongue. And when she stepped toward him, lifted her hand to the face that was not his face, he knew that he had truly – finally – stopped fighting.

He could reject the tangled, knotted mess he had become, reject the powerful, terrifying feeling he had for her, but it would mean rejecting her, too. And he found that while he could live with them, live with the questions and the lack of control, he could not live without her. Not anymore. Could not, and did not want to.

He loved her.

Jason hadn't been sure what that meant beyond the vague memories, but looking down at her now, he knew it with a certainty he had possessed about anything else. Not even his mother. He was a creature of nightmares, of Hell, and he loved her. If she wanted his company, what right did he have to refuse her?

He would take whatever she would give him and when she was gone he would survive on the memory of her, the recollection that there was more in the world than emptiness and death.

Even for him.

* * *

 **NOTES:**

Before anything else, I need to give a shoutout to ghost_chance on Tumblr.

Out of a mix of laziness and sneakiness (I was doing this at work...ahem) I was getting to my own Ao3 page via Google rather than logging in or searching the site because it was faster and I needed to look up some dialogue from the last chapter to remember what the hell I'd written, and by absolute random I stumbled - literal internet stumble - across a tumblr post giving a reading recommendation for this story. Which in reality was basically the longest, most thought-out, deeply considered, and praise-filled monster of a comment/review I've ever had in my life. I shit you not, it made my goddamn MONTH. I have never received such high praise about my writing EVER and I essentially cried in the backroom at work because it was lovely and I needed it so badly and I just...holy crap, you guys.

So, ghost_chance, if you're still reading: BLESS YOU. THANK YOU. I LOVE YOU.

Ahem.

I didn't plan on this chapter ending on this note and it feels really negative, but I promise everything's ok! For fear of saying too much, we're nearing a breaking point so the angst is kind of a counterbalance to that? I don't know, my brain is strange and I have a thing for making my male protagonists suffer. Sorry not sorry. I also wrote this really fast so pardon any mistakes. Did anyone catch the so subtle you'll break your teeth on them Beauty and the Beast references? I promise that was actually accidental until I caught it, and then I kept it because fuck it. It tracks, ok.

Also…I'm starting to feel like this story might end up a bit longer than originally planned because I'M WORDY AS FUCK. I'm not sure if that's a good thing or a bad thing. :/ -sigh-

It occurred to me recently just how many fandoms I've stumbled into via fanfiction knowing only bits of the actual media they were based in – Silent Hill and Predator are the two that come primarily to mind since they're recent. I know the slasher community is quite healthy and sizeable (out-of-place pun?), and that there are plenty of Jason-loving folks out there, but I am curious as to whether I've managed to lure anyone into this particular corner of insanity. Also curious as to how much of that would have been due to the way I tagged this thing. Have I mentioned how much I adore Ao3's tagging system? Because I do for all of the reasons.

Anyways. I'm going to get started on the next one. For now I will simply add that every single one of you readers makes this worth doing. Kudos give me serotonin and your comments give me actual life. I swear to god. Thank you.

Until next time!


	20. Body Language

**CHAPTER 20**  
Body Language

~/13/~

For someone lacking in any dating experience, Jason seemed almost unconsciously intent on doing everything he could to woo her right off her feet.

She'd slept later than planned, the result of having stayed up far too late engrossed in a new book that had turned out to be thrilling beyond her expectations. It was after noon by the time she trudged out to the porch with her Depression-era worthy brunch consisting of a can of tomato soup and half a muffin, and flipping _hell_ , she was tired of soup. She wished he would bring her rabbit again, or something else like it, because that had been a delicious – not to mention a refreshing – change.

What she found waiting for her was not rabbit, or even edible for that matter, but upon seeing it she gasped audibly and almost dropped her soup.

For what felt like an entire minute Whitney could only gape, astonished. The entire length of the porch railing, from kitchen door all the way down to the far corner had been completely _covered_ with flowers, until not an inch of the wood beneath was visible. A froth of little white blossoms almost identical to the ones scattered along the lakeside.

Where on earth had he found so many? More importantly, how long had it taken him to do this?

Carefully she set down her food and crossed to the railing for a closer look, noticing immediately that the spray of white had been interspersed with other colors. Bright yellow buttercups, sweet-smelling clover flushed a vibrant fuchsia and still attached to rich green leaves. And then there were the roses. At least, she thought they were roses. Wild ones, not the perfect, manicured kind from a garden with their tightly-packed petals, but softer, flatter, the color fading from a pale peachy-pink to white near the delicate golden centers. Every flower painstakingly and individually placed to create an intricate garland to greet her when she woke.

She was, in a word, spellbound.

The other offerings left by the door were a little more utilitarian: a box of candles, more matches, and a tin of individually-wrapped teabags labeled for easing sleep and soothing colds (likely not his reason for bringing them). But it was the flowers that continued to take her breath away every time she looked at them. Which she did constantly as she ate.

What had been going through his mind as he'd assembled this…this work of art? Had it been the product of what was probably just one in an endless string of sleepless nights? Maybe he'd simply thought she would like it, that it would make her happy.

Mission accomplished.

A little later on, he had caught up to her as she was exiting the bathroom, face washed and teeth freshly brushed, and she hadn't even had time to begin remarking on the gift before he took her hand and started towing her gently from the path and into the woods.

"What—?" she'd begun, only to be shushed into silence when he pressed a finger over the nonexistent mouth-space of his mask.

The reason for the need to be quiet was illuminated a moment or so later when he motioned for her to crouch down next to him and pointed to a spot between the gnarled, exposed knots of a great old tree's roots. Peering through, she saw them: a nest of baby rabbits just starting to hop about like tiny, brown, fuzz-covered popcorn balls. Though she clamped a hand to her mouth to suppress her squeal, she was certain Jason could discern her delight through the other where it groped for the sleeve at his elbow and gripped like a vise.

They had stayed there for a good twenty minutes or so, watching the rambunctious antics of the tiny new rabbits until what must have been their mother returned and began peering around in obvious concern – clearly sensing the nearness of something that didn't belong there – which they took as their cue to go.

And then, when they'd been stepping back out into the camp proper, Jason had paused as though having abruptly remembered something. Reaching into a pocket he extracted a jar stuffed with jagged chunks of something suspended in a viscous, golden substance, which he held out for her to take with an air of pleased presentation. She'd taken it, uncertain at first until she realized what she was looking at.

Honeycomb.

He'd brought her a jar of honeycomb. Fresh from the look of it, and from the slight stickiness at the edge of the lid. She had an indescribable certainty that it hadn't been stolen, either. From anyone but the bees, that was. Brought it because he presumed (correctly) that her succumbing to the siren call of the shitty store-bought chemical cookies, alongside everything else remotely sugary, indicated she had a sweet tooth? Or maybe he just remembered it being tasty and wanted to share in that? Perhaps both.

Again she had gaped, stunned. He must have been on his way to deliver it before the discovery of the rabbit nest had distracted him.

"Thank you," she had murmured, unable – and not really trying – to keep the lilt of pleasure from her voice. "Where the heck did you find this?"

He gave a loose wave of a hand to indicate somewhere to the west of where they were now, which didn't implicitly say had been a fair distance but she surmised it had been.

Her brow had furrowed. "You weren't stung, were you?"

Jason's eyes had creased with a smile as he shook his head as if to say: _of course not._ She wasn't entirely sure she'd believed him, but she supposed he must have been fine. If gaping wounds didn't trouble him she supposed beestings would be next to nothing.

She had lowered her eyes to the jar cradled between her hands like a treasure, unable to ignore the dizzy, haphazard race of her pulse.

Well. He had definitely upped his game where bringing her gifts was concerned. There were things she needed – sustenance, shelter, light – but she didn't consider those things gifts. He'd seen to her needs before he'd even come close to liking her, and he had continued to do so, though the effort had certainly increased with time. Even his bringing her things to occupy her mind had seemed more kindnesses than gestures of affection, meeting a different necessity a little higher up on the hierarchy. But the knife, the flowers, going out of his way to show her cute baby animals because he knew she would like them, and now presenting her with honey he had gathered himself…it might have been a bit unconventional, but they were not that far off from gestures she had been raised to associate with courting.

If he did any of it with such intent, or with the intent of convincing her not to go tomorrow, she suspected it was only unconsciously so. The acts themselves were purely for their own sake, and hers. Though they might have been just a tiny bit selfish in that he derived pleasure from her pleasure, as was obvious simply by the way he watched her for reactions, studious and eager.

The man had no guile to speak of. It was both incredibly endearing and unexpectedly attractive, which shouldn't have been unexpected at all. Social conditioning would have her believe that lacking in this specific kind of artifice was equal to being somehow undesirable for reasons she could not actually string together in a way that made any kind of evolutionary sense. Why should she want a man that made it clear he could manipulate her should he choose; a man whose motives were unclear, especially where her happiness and wellbeing were concerned? Biologically it didn't make sense. So clearly, somewhere along the line, something had gotten screwed up socially – likely in tune with people becoming more…what was the word? Right. _Evolved._

As they stood there at the edge of the path, Jason had lifted a hand to her hair, brushing a fingertip lightly across the flower she had tucked into the twist she'd created behind her ear. One of the roses from the railing, put there in what had seemed like a small, unthinking way of carrying the gift with her, but which she recognized now had been a bit of unconscious courting behavior of her own.

"You like my hair?"

It wasn't really a question, she already knew he did just from the way he had touched it two nights ago, but he nodded as if it had been. Perhaps because he had wanted her to ask, why he'd touched it in the first place. Had he wanted to somehow tell her she looked pretty?

She was probably reading way too much into everything, which was not out of character for her in the slightest, but she felt her face go warm all the same. Because hadn't she kind of hoped he might think it? Hadn't some small part of her subconsciously been trying to get his attention? Putting a flower in her hair wasn't exactly on par with intentionally wearing jewelry he'd given her…but it wasn't that far off, either.

"Thank you," she said again, a little quieter this time, "for the flowers. They're beautiful."

And with no more than that mild expression of thanks she had managed to turn Jason Voorhees – the infamous, vengeful ghost of Crystal Lake and grown-ass undead _tank_ of a man – into the epitome of an awkward adolescent boy. His eyes dropped, his shoulders hunching inward in that tell-tale bashful yet pleased way as he offered a squirming half-shrug that was absolutely supposed to say it was no big deal, but was also quite a loud proclamation of delight at her enjoyment.

At that point he pretty much fled. He didn't run, exactly; he took a few stilted steps back, lifting one great hand in an uncertain little half-wave before turning and all but diving back into the shelter of the woods.

He was such a _puppy._ He could run a hand up her leg in way that was almost blatantly sexual and be almost entirely calm, but thank him for bringing her flowers and he lost his nerve?

It was goddamn adorable.

As she was, yet again, running out of underwear she spent most of her day doing laundry; hauling it out to the stream in a basket and working the clothes between scrub brush and rock as she had before.

The thing was, she didn't really know why she did it, or why she hadn't simply done enough to get her through the rest of the day instead of two entire trips' worth. It wasn't as if she'd need it. She wasn't planning on packing up and lugging all these clothes that didn't really belong to her. She supposed it was just to have something to do – something that wasn't thinking about how heavily the prospect of tomorrow was starting to weigh on her. She didn't want to think about why that was, or why the concept of finally getting to go home just sat like a cold lump in the pit of her stomach instead of lending her comfort.

So she washed, and she sang – cycling through all the song lyrics she could regurgitate from memory a good third of which seemed to be comprised of nothing else.

She didn't know quite what to do with herself after that. She hung up the last of the clean clothes to dry and wandered up the stairs inside the lodge, but even her exploring was less than enthusiastic. The discovery of the dusty, pristinely untouched bed- and bathrooms – reserved for the camp owners, she guessed – she met with little more energy than it took to note that they were there, at which point she realized she was in rather a gloomy mood. She wouldn't have expected it after such a lovely morning (well, afternoon), but she was. And she didn't much care for it.

Sunsets seemed to pass slowly in the summer. In all likelihood they lasted no longer than in any other season, but it felt as if they did. Part of it was that they seemed to start earlier, as the long shadows of afternoon continued to stretch and deepen and suddenly it was evening yet still too light to be properly night – only to stay that way for _hours_ still after.

It wasn't that way tonight.

As she wandered listlessly back outside it was to see that, to her dismay, the light had faded much more than seemed right, and the hourglass feeling – that of hours slipping through her fingers like sand through a sieve – crept back up on her.

Time was running out, and there was nothing she could do about it.

Her hand smoothed gently back and forth over the porch railing, just brushing the delicate surface of the flowers there, and trying to pretend like she wasn't staring into the line of shadow-choked trees for Jason.

Wherever he was, she didn't know. And there was probably good reason for that. She had spent no more than thirty minutes in his company that day, and as much as that chafed as hurt as she could have let herself feel about his absence all evening when he clearly knew she would be leaving tomorrow, she suppressed the urge to go looking when it was already much too dark. For all she knew the retinue of gifts today had been his way of saying goodbye. For all she knew he was staying away with the intent of easing the sting of her inevitable departure. She didn't blame him. She wished she knew how to ease her own yawning feeling of melancholy.

This was not how she wanted to spend her last night here. She didn't want to end this crazy, awful, and yet somehow wonderful experience on such a bitter note. She wanted…well, she couldn't have everything she wanted. But she could do a right lot better than sulking out on the porch in the dark.

It was by chance that she remembered the wood-box out behind the kitchen door – the wood inside old, but dry, well protected by the water-sealed box. She had been lighting the first of her many evening candles when the flicker of the flame at the end of her match had caught and held her eye, the idea like a night-blooming flower in her mind.

Whitney had only barely been a Girl Scout; just long enough to endure being forced to learn things she had no interest in learning and sing songs and play games with other children that she hadn't especially liked. Enough to experience a single cycle of selling cookies, and declared that she was not cut out for troop-life. But there were a few things from her brief stint as a scout that had been useful enough to remember. One of which being that she knew how to make a mean campfire. Granted, it was a little different in an actual fireplace rather than out in the open – but in a way that made it easier. Less chance of wind blowing it out before it got started, or of losing control and accidentally starting a blaze. She would be able to let it burn itself safely out at the end of the night.

As she shoved her makeshift bedding out of the way and assembled materials – toting wood in from the box to stack on the stone hearth and gathering old newspapers from a stack on one of the bookshelves – her mood gradually began to lift. It wouldn't be exactly what she wanted; but she could have dinner in front of a warm fire, finish her book, and maybe have a cup of tea with some of that honey. It would be lovely and cozy, and since it was shaping up to be something of a chillier night, cozy sounded just about perfect.

Soon enough she had a nice little fire sparking cheerily away in the fireplace, and she was setting the grate into place to see about dinner. Rather than simply settle for soup as was from the can, she used the little gas camp stove to boil some water and cooked herself some pasta from the jar on the counter, drowned it in hot cream of mushroom soup, and pretended it was vegetarian stroganoff. And if the noodles were a little stale, she really couldn't tell.

Carrying her bowl into the rec room, she settled into one of the low wooden chairs and promptly dumped her first forkful of food onto her lap.

With a sigh, she set the bowl on the floor and stood up, shimmying out of her soup-smeared shorts. She didn't bother to replace them. The oversized shirt she'd put on more than covered enough for her own comfort. Besides, there was no one else to see. So she slipped her bra off too, for good measure, shaking it out from the bottom of the shirt and chucking it over the back of the couch to land somewhere on the floor.

Much better.

At some point it had begun to rain. A soft, light summer drizzle almost too faint to hear even when the drops struck the glass of the windows and which only enhanced the cozy cabin atmosphere. Enjoying the hushed patter she ate her dinner, thoroughly enjoying her garbage-gourmet meal so much that she actually went back for seconds. Once finished, she padded back to the kitchen to wash the dishes and heat more water for tea.

To say she wasn't expecting the knock was maybe the tiniest smidge of an understatement.

It was a soft sound, a gentle rapping rather than the bang her startled jump would have suggested. She twisted, blinking at the kitchen door for a moment before drying her hands and crossing to open it.

It wasn't like she didn't know who would be on the other side. If she hadn't, she might have remembered she wasn't wearing pants and considered doing something about it, or even thought about tracking down her knife first. But this wasn't some horror-movie stranger from the woods drawn by her lights, and so she thought nothing of turning the handle and swinging the door wide, unsurprised to see Jason there. Surprised only that he'd come at all.

"Hey," she said carefully.

There was something in the way he stood there, a tight, almost uncertain energy about him that made her soften her greeting, as though to be too loud or sharp might send him slipping back into the dying light from which he'd come. He seemed…almost dazed, confused as to how he came to be there or why. He was just looking at her, eyes shadowed, unreadable, and yet she couldn't help feeling that he seemed to be asking for something – direction, purpose, a way to shut out the noise in his own head.

She empathized.

Whitney was not too proud to admit that the sight of him felt something like a fine, thin blade being slowly pushed up into her gut, but there was no way in hell that she was going to turn him away.

Moving to the side, she offered: "do you want to come in?"

He hesitated, and it was clear he didn't know what he wanted.

She didn't even need to search her brain for something to say. It came naturally, rolling from her tongue as smooth as liquor down her throat. "Maybe we could do some reading? We're still working on that book…"

Jason's great shoulders slumped as though from heaving a sigh. It was almost imperceptible, barely a movement at all, and she might have missed it entirely had she not become so familiar with his mannerisms, the vast array of little micro-movements so vital to reading his emotions.

Slowly, cautiously, he stepped in through the doorway, ducking his head so as not to bang into the frame. She'd had to work much harder to get him inside last time. Tonight she needed just the invitation rather than repeated coaxing, yet she could tell it was not an easy thing for him to do. He was fighting the reflex to retreat, to return to the safety and freedom outside. So far the inclination to be with her was winning out, but she left the door open rather than close it behind him to eliminate the chance he might feel trapped or caged in.

She did, however, demand his coat.

"Off with it," she ordered gently, "you're dripping on my floor."

In truth, he wasn't really damp enough to drip. It hadn't been raining long or hard enough to set in his clothes, and at this rate it would peter out before it ever could, but that wasn't the point. The point was to get him to settle, to offer a bit of that direction he seemed to be looking for. If he caught on to her bullshit he didn't give any sign of it. He just did what he was told, slipping from the ragged quilted thing and handing it over so she could hang it on one of the hooks next to the pantry.

She didn't have much stomach for it now, but she went about making tea as planned purely for the sake of it being mundane and nonthreatening. It gave him time to acclimate, and gave her something to do that wasn't hovering over him while he did so, and by the time she had the water hot and teabag situated in a mug he seemed steady enough to move again.

Gathering tea, the jar of honey, and a spoon she made for the doorway.

"Come on," she coaxed, relieved when he followed her into the hall and the rec room beyond. "Sit wherever you like."

Jason lingered in the mouth of the hallway at first. She thought he might be surveying the room, taking in the layout and all the potential exits, and she waited patiently, occupying herself with setting the tea things down on the little end table next to the couch, scooping up the book left open on her chair and returning it to the bookshelf in exchange for the copy of Charlotte's Web they had been in the midst of reading before…everything. When she turned it was to see him cautiously approach the chair opposite hers and lower himself almost gingerly into it. To her relief, it didn't seem to be so small that he had to wedge himself into it.

Suppressing a smile, she padded back to the space before the hearth, the floor hard against her shins as she knelt next to the table.

"We got farther than I remember," she mused, unscrewing the mason jar of honey and spooning some into her tea. It was a pointless remark, but she had reason to believe pointless remarks tended to have a soothing effect on him, as this one seemed to.

Where before he had had sat stiff, all his joints sharp and hard edged, he seemed to be softening, easing steadily back into the thin cushioned seat and backing of the chair.

She scraped a drop of honey from the lip of the jar with a finger and tucked it absently into her mouth, making a happy little humming noise as she put the lid back on. Then, tucking her feet underneath her, she leaned until her hip met a pillow fallen from the makeshift bed, settled herself against it, and reached for the book.

" _Now that school was over, Fern visited the barn almost every day, to sit quietly on her stool."_

As she read, Jason gradually relaxed, the tension in his body slipping away like fog at the sound of her voice garnished with the pop and crackle from the fire. She read through a whole chapter, never once touching her tea.

She made it through half of another chapter when the logs behind the grate groaned and collapsed, pulling her from the pages with a small start. Marking her place with a bit of twine she set the book aside and went to the hearth. She added three more logs to the bit of wood reduced to carbon and glowing coals with a dry, crumbling crackle and a flurry of sparks before setting the grate back into place.

Straightening with a tiny groan she arched her back and stretched, easing the kinks from sitting in the same place for so long. Then she turned, just in time to catch the startled upward dart of Jason's eyes, the slight jerk of his head, and she would have sworn in front of any judge – bible or no – that he had been staring at her ass.

And maybe it was the heat from the coals not yet cooled from her flushed face making her head swim, or the fading night and hourglass minutes looming like a guillotine over her head. Maybe it was about controlling what couldn't be. Or maybe it was about nothing more than that she had been too lonely for too long and simply wanted to feel its opposite. Maybe she should just go back to her pillow and pick up the book and carry on like nothing had just happened.

But that wasn't what she did.

It took her a grand total of four steps to get to him, half of another to pivot and shift her weight – to plant a hand against his shoulder and lift herself so that she was sitting sideways across his lap. She felt him suck in a breath, sharp and thin as an arrow. His eyes had widened, his head rearing back as he stared at her in a way that was as much question as incredulity.

 _What are you doing?_

What indeed.

She hadn't a fucking clue.

One arm of the chair was digging into her side, her knee wedged uncomfortably against the other. But she didn't feel it. How could she when he was right there, warm and solid against her, the rise and fall of his chest a little quicker than a moment ago. She felt the rhythm of it against her palm, beneath the time-worn softness of his shirt collar beneath her fingertips, though she didn't remember moving to touch him there.

This close, she could make out all the tiny imperfections in the surface of the mask. Nicks and scrapes, fine dents, chips in the painted chevrons at the brow and under the eyes. It enclosed his entire face, but the edge stopped, curving, before his ears. The worn old leather of the straps tucked behind them, over and around his skull. And below, just before the lower edge of the fiberglass dipped to engulf his chin, the very back corner of his jaw was visible. Strong, squared bone, bare skin absent any trace of scruff.

The compulsion was so sudden, so powerful that she moved as if swayed by the strings of gravity itself. She bent her head, fingers curling against his chest as she pressed her mouth to the innocuous little spot, just where jaw and ear met.

She felt the ragged stutter of his gasp, felt him jerk as if she'd electrocuted him, and quickly recoiled, flustered and promptly ashamed of herself.

What the hell did she think she was _doing?_

"I-I'm sorry," she stammered, "I'll stop—"

Jason was shaking his head in protest of her assurances, and she blinked at him, taken aback. She had thought for sure he would be relieved for her to remove herself and refrain from accosting him, but then she realized he wasn't actually giving her any signal to back off. He was still sitting as he had been, a little more rigid than before, maybe, but his hands were steady where they rested on the arms of the chair and his gaze was level when she sought it. She'd surprised him; that was all. He didn't want her to stop.

"Would you…"

Oh, she was going to hell.

"Would you do something for me?" He gave a tiny head-tilt of question, and she snagged the fabric of his shirt between her fingers to tug at it. "Take this off?"

Though he seemed somewhat nonplussed, he didn't hesitate. Splaying one hand over the front of his mask, the other reached back to grab a fistful of shirt. She watched him as he pulled the garment up and over his head, feeling much like a Victorian maiden all giddy and faint at the prospect of a sliver of bare wrist. Only he gave her much, much more than that.

His body was not what some would call a thing of beauty. As she'd imagined, he didn't have the definition of someone who sculpted and shaped their musculature like an art medium to fit some modern impression of the David statue. But also as she'd imagined, the definition he did have was raw, heavy, naturally constructed from having actually used it. From hauling fully grown people around all day until he could have fucking bench-pressed them if he wanted to.

She traced the thick lines of his neck with her stare, the prominent arc where clavicle met shoulder set above where the bicep began – and holy mother of _god,_ his _biceps_. She followed the shallow lined that halved the slabs of muscle that made up his chest, which lined his sides through the taper of a powerful abdomen and all the way down to the topmost hints of solid hipbones.

Had her mouth just gone dry? It seemed such an extreme reaction, after all, she was no blushing, wide-eyed girl…except her eyes _were_ wide, and she _was_ blushing. Fiercely.

 _Jesus._

He seemed so much more...well, as stupid as it might have sounded, he seemed more like a man than either of her boyfriends-past – specifically a _man,_ rather than a boy. She couldn't have articulated why. It wasn't that they had been all that young. Mike hadn't been, anyway. And Jason wasn't that much older than she, less than a decade. But somehow it felt that way; some combination of a maturity forced on him by a life without the cushions of modern convenience and his pure physicality, and _damn_ if it wasn't working for her. She had actually gone a little breathless, for when she spoke again her voice came faint and high in her throat.

"It is…ok if I touch you?"

Up until now his eyes had been steady upon her face, watching her curiously while she gaped at him like a stupefied goldfish. They faltered now, ever so slightly – a faint, brief flare of uncertainty, before he offered a nod in answer.

She paused. It didn't seem like he didn't like the idea, more as if didn't understand why she would want to do it. He was way out of his element, and he knew that. But she knew it too. She needed him to understand that he didn't need to acquiesce to anything he didn't want just because she asked, or because he feared telling her no would drive her away, because it wouldn't. It was the closest she had ever come to being at eye-level with him, she realized – which still wasn't all that close, as she had to tip her chin up to meet his gaze.

"You don't have to say yes." He blinked, as if confused, and she leaned back by another inch to emphasize looking him full in the eye. "If you don't want. It's ok if you _don't_ want me to do something. You understand?"

Jason's head tilted ever so slightly, absorbing her words. She felt his fingers brush her back, and then curl away, like it had when he'd reached for her face in the kitchen two nights ago.

"You can touch me," she reassured, "whenever you want. You don't have to ask every time."

A moment passed, counted out by the single contraction of his breath before he laid his hand against her side, cupping the curve of her waist and squeezing very gently. He nodded again, the bone white fiberglass gleaming in the firelight, and this time she didn't question the acknowledgement.

He understood.

Over time she had come to see the mask as his face, in a way, in spite of knowing perfectly well that it was merely a shield. It was different now, with the soft rush of breath hot against her cheek from behind the rows of perforation, she found herself wondering what he might look like underneath. He must have a nose and mouth, and she heard no wheeze or catch upon in- or exhale, which meant if he was somehow disfigured it couldn't be so debilitating as to affect the breath. Was he scarred? Were the features disproportional? Was it truly that bad, or was it simply that people had the propensity for immense cruelty within groups, encouraging drawing of lines between an _us_ and an _other?_ All she could clearly see were his eyes. The one was set ever so slightly lower than the other, which founded her theory at least in part. They were also quite beautiful, incredibly expressive, and lacking in lashes, she had discovered, or else the lashes were so fine and pale that she couldn't see them.

Was...would he be blushing under there? The genes that had put the hint of red in her hair also made her blush easily and thoroughly – all the way down to her chest if prolonged enough. She entertained the thought for a moment; a shy, sweet man flushing underneath the look given to him by a girl he fancied. _The_ girl. There was only one, had only ever been one. And _that_ was a heady thought.

What might his mouth look like, she wondered. His lips. Would they be narrow and clever, or full and soft? Somewhere in between?

The curiosity had bitten deep now, but it never occurred to her to ask. She was asking so much already, and he had relinquished so many of his safeguards for her. So she took that curiosity, folded it up, tucked it away, and satisfied herself with what she did have. Every glorious inch of it.

She let her hands trail over the heavy muscle of his arms, the skin there a little too pale but surprisingly smooth. There was a thick band of scar tissue which arced over his shoulder, as though someone had attempted to behead him and failed, their swing too wide, too shallow.

More scars dappled his chest and arms, and a mean, jagged slice ran along his side as though from an attempted gutting. His skin was a map of them: the marks of rough living, from learning by chance and risk and paying the price for not having any other choice. She ran a finger along one of the small, iridescent lines of an old, healed wound along his ribs. He didn't have much by way of hair, she noticed, a faint dusting down his forearms and not much else aside from the fine trail started below his navel, arrowing downward to disappear below his waistband.

Whitney could feel herself teetering on the edge of a precipice, toeing a line not quite yet crossed – one that, once crossed, she could never go back from.

She could hear the chime of warning in the farthest recesses of her head, but she was slipping beyond the reach of sense to save her.

Though, quite frankly, she wasn't sure she wanted it to.

~/~

The day had held an air of inevitability; the dragging pull of a great weight being pushed slowly off the lip of a cliff. From the moment dawn broke Jason had felt as though he were simply biding his time, waiting for the impact when it finally fell and crashed to the depths below.

The third day – the last day.

In hindsight, he didn't remember much of it. He remembered gathering the flowers, remembered laying them out in a long, lacy trail down the length of the railing. He didn't remember why. He remembered finding the beehive: having recollected that honeycomb was good, sweet, and that Whitney liked sweet things. He remembered the knowledge of having discovered as a child how to acquire it without being stung, but he didn't remember actually collecting it. Had almost forgotten about it entirely until the weight of the jar in his pocket stirred his memory.

He remembered her smile – he always remembered her smiles – remembered the pinkish-white flower she had selected from the mass he had brought and tucked into her hair, petals brushing the shell of her ear and so lovely that it seemed almost at home there.

He had left her then, for some reason that had made sense at the time. Or so he assumed. He hadn't intended to stay away, for as much as it had hurt to be near her, knowing how soon she would be gone, it hurt just as badly not to be…and if he must be in pain, he would much rather be with her than not. But then he had been deep in the woods with no idea how he'd ended up there or when it had gotten so dark or why he had left her at all. _Why,_ when there was so little time left? Such precious time…

He had made for the lodge at a dead sprint as it began to rain, warm and misty as it often was in the late summer months, clambering over the rail of the porch and scattering flowers in his wake, to stand at her door. And if he had knocked, he had no memory of that, either. He had been bristling, limned with vivid energy and nothing to do with it, until the door opened to reveal her and the tight feeling of imminent collapse had softened to a whisper.

Her invitation inside scratched at the developed distaste he had for being inside certain spaces. That, at least, had felt normal, and he acquiesced for two reasons. First, because he had done so once and had not perished, and second because he refused to let his conditioned aversion interfere with what time he still had with her.

Her bustle about the kitchen had soothed him, centered him, as her nearness so often did now. She hadn't been wearing pants, he'd noticed, and though the shirt she wore was long it left much more of her legs bare than the dress had. There had been a hint of woodsmoke in her hair, and from the faint sounds emanating from the room beyond this one she had lit a fire.

He had let her lead him to another room, coax him into a chair that wasn't entirely comfortable, but was sturdy enough to take his weight. She had crossed the floor to a tall, narrow bookcase, exchanging an unfamiliar book to the one he recognized from so many years spent on his own shelf, laden with dust – shiny now, as it hadn't been since he was a child. She had opened the jar of honey he'd given her and spooned out a piece of comb and added it to the liquid in her cup, spoon and all. Then traced the rim of the jar, gathering an errant trickle of honey upon a fingertip.

A hot, familiar coil of tension twisted in the pit of his stomach when she had slipped that finger between her lips to lick it clean. His apparent obsession with her soft, pretty mouth – all the prettier just then, glistening golden with honey – making itself abruptly and insistently known until he shoved it back and out of sight.

He'd managed to forget it inside the sanctuary of the words as she read aloud. The room had been warm, the sounds of the fire and the rain melding with the lilt of her voice to create a kind of soothing music, and while the chair itself was a little too hard and a little too low to the floor, he had been lulled into a comfort that had felt like a scene from an old, familiar dream.

It had been more than nice, more than pleasant. It had been like a taste of something buried in his subconscious – something bright and sweet and wonderful that he had forgotten even how to want – made real again, suddenly no longer out of reach.

Then the fire had choked and spluttered, the rhythm of Whitney's voice abruptly quieting. It had been like being shaken from a stupor, leaving him disoriented, grasping for footing.

He had seen her move without fully paying attention as she rose and went to the hearth armed with a long stick of iron and a piece of fresh wood. She had bent at the waist, the hem of the shirt riding up as she did and his focus slammed back into reality, suddenly and utterly helpless to prevent his eyes from dropping to the long, sleek length of her bare thighs, to the faint lines of shadow framing the curves of her backside. He caught a glimpse of pale blue, something lacy and delicate, just before she straightened and realized that he'd been correct in his suspicion that she was no more clothed there than she had been in the dress.

Why this seemed to him lose equilibrium for a moment he wasn't precisely sure, but then she turned, going suddenly far too still, and he knew immediately that she'd caught him looking.

He shouldn't have been, he knew that, but he had been completely unable to help it, and then unable to look away. Guilt knotted at his insides, and he couldn't have said what he thought she would do. His mind was a blaze of panic and little else. She started toward him, and though he never in a thousand years would ever truly think her capable of striking him in real anger, he found he was steeling himself as if he expected it. It would have shocked him less than what she did do.

Jason had no idea what it was to be speechless, but he thought it might feel something like the way his mind instantly emptied of all tangible substance as it did when she settled across his legs. She was all he could feel; her weight against his lap, the soft press of her bottom, a sleek female shape next to his mass. Her fingers were curled into the front of his shirt, holding on as if for stability, or safety, and he liked it. He liked it far more than he should.

She tipped forward suddenly, out of his line of sight, and he felt her breath, her lips at the edge of his jaw, grazing the lobe of his ear.

The heat banked in his gut ignited, curling and breathing inside him like flame. He knew he had jumped, knew he had startled her, but she seemed to think it was because he didn't want her to touch him when that was the exact _opposite_ of what he wanted. He didn't know any other way to tell her but to shake his head helplessly, to reject her apology as much as what she might have offered after…which, by some stroke of luck, seemed to have been satisfactory, for she didn't slip away.

She did look at him a little oddly, which made him more than a bit nervous.

"Would you do something for me?"

The question amused him. Evidently she didn't realize that he would do anything she asked, including removing his shirt, as she apparently wanted him to.

It was an easy enough thing, yet the instant he'd slipped his arms from the sleeves he suspected that what he'd thought she asked wasn't actually what she had asked at all. She hadn't wanted him to remove the clothing for its own sake, because it was dirty or unpleasant to touch, but because she wanted to _look at him._

By now he had come to realize at least on a basis of logic that she must find something about him appealing. And yet to be faced with the concept that she might feel the same kind of magnetic pull toward him that he did to her, that _she_ might be _attracted_ to him was nothing short of baffling. It was the only way any ofthis made some kind of sense. It was the only way her putting her _mouth_ to his _skin_ …

That was the exact moment when he put it together. She had kissed him. Not on the mouth, no, but for all that his only real experience with kissing was limited solely to what his mother had bestowed – little affectionate pecks to cheek or the top of his head – he could tell the difference between those and what Whitney had just done.

He was suddenly lightheaded, his lungs shuddering as he reached for air, sweat beading at his temples, slick at his chest and down his back. Fear, adrenaline, excitement.

"Is it…ok if I touch you?"

Her voice was at a lower register than normal, almost hoarse, but not quite. _Hoarse_ implied roughness from damage, like screaming. This wasn't like that. He recognized the tilt of a question, nodded without thinking, and when she pulled back to look at him more directly he didn't understand why she seemed so concerned.

He reached without thinking, fingers grazing the thin, almost silky cloth of the shirt she wore, and flinched back reflexively. And _that_ was why had said those things, told him: _"you don't have to say yes."_ She had been doing what he what he so often did; seeking permission, not wanting to overstep.

"You can touch me," she said now, husky, warm. "Whenever you want."

He didn't dare do more than lay his hand against her side, as he'd been going to, didn't dare because the next thing he knew her fingers were tracing the skin over his collarbones and trailing down his arms. He still felt grimy, though he had scrubbed himself near to raw yesterday. Yet it wasn't enough to warrant interrupting her.

She couldn't possibly not feel him growing hard beneath her, and he felt his face flame with a heat that was as much shame as it was the heady pleasure of her nearness, of her hands on him. Yet if she noticed she gave no sign of it. Her eyes were dark, almost glazed, her gaze angled to where she dragged her palms down his chest, gentle fingertips outlining the scars he had grown to ignore. He could feel her trembling, a fine, deeply-internalized shiver he felt echoed in his own bones.

He had to touch her.

He _had_ to.

It was a compulsion, a need, not any controllable urge or craving but a need as fierce as breathing. He cast his discarded shirt to the floor with a muted thump of cloth to free his hand and lifted it to her shoulder, bare where the neck of her shirt had slid down to expose it. The skin was luminous as if lit from within – as if the drop of honey she'd consumed had been absorbed and begun to glow. He touched her there, fingertips brushing the crest of the joint, then over along the delicate arc of a collarbone to the hollow at the base of her throat. His hand slid back, cupping the side of her neck, part of him almost surprised when she didn't flinch at the curve of his fingers at her nape, in the shallow notch under her fragile jawbone.

In that moment he was extremely aware of just how deeply she must trust him if she was letting him do this, in spite of every reason she had not to. True the grip was not at all like the one he would have used with the intent to cause harm, but he _could_ have, and that she would allow him to put a hand around her neck was no small thing.

Something tender and possessive took his heart in a gentle fist. Lamenting that he had no way to express any of it, he stroked softly with his thumb, not realizing until he had that the place was the mirror to where she had kissed him.

Not until her head tipped back, her lips parting, and desire slid between his ribs like a knife.

It was strange, he had never really thought much about kissing. He remembered his mother's, the quick little doses of affection or comfort, to soothe a wound, and he had been loosely aware of the other kind of kiss that he'd witnessed some of the older campers and counselors engage in, or what he had assumed must be that. It had always looked so unpleasant: mouths crammed together, _open,_ almost as if they were eating each other in a truly appalling way. He had relegated the activity to something he would never understand and determined to ignore it.

But now as he found his eyes locked once again to Whitney's mouth, pink and lush and glistening, he thought he might understand a little better than he'd anticipated.

Since he had first donned his sackcloth shroud upon his resurrection he had never thought to remove it. He'd had to occasionally, in the rare moments he had to assuage a dwindling hunger and clean his teeth after, or to wash. It had always been a product of unfortunate necessity. He had never _wanted_ to. Yet now, as he stared down at Whitney's lovely upturned face, her eyes shuttered and lips parted as if in some kind of anticipation he wanted very much to seize his shield under the chin, cast it off, and bend his head to kiss her.

It was foolish, impulsive, a there-and-gone stab of need that throbbed as it faded. He knew better than to ever have followed such an urge. Any attempt at such a gesture would be clumsy at best. Disastrous at worst. He was not exactly adept at using his mouth for even simple things. To attempt something so intimate, with someone so soft...the fleeting thought of the damage he might unwittingly do terrified him. Besides, she wouldn't want to kiss something so malformed and ugly. Not like that.

A sound left her – a hard, shallow exhale too forceful to be called a sigh. Her hand found his arm, his skin prickling with a fine, swift shock of awareness as her fingers curled into his flesh as if she needed the stability.

He adjusted on instinct, hand sliding up and around to her back...no more than half a second before she moved.

~/~

She felt drunk.

She couldn't think… _needed_ to think. The heat of his skin was cloying in her blood, her temples, the beat of his heart steady and strong against her palms, and she couldn't string together the sense to remember why she should probably take a minute and breathe.

Vaguely she heard something soft hit the floor, then she felt his hand skim the slope of her shoulder, the shallow dip at the base of her neck. She swallowed reflexively as the callused pads of his fingertips slid along her throat, around the back of it, grazing gently over the thundering pulse point beneath her jaw. And how was it that this, just a touch, could be more arousing than a kiss? She'd had a mouth at her neck before, though not as often as she might have liked. Mike hadn't really been attuned enough to notice her breath change whenever he did it, hadn't noticed the enthusiasm. Jason was far, far more perceptive.

The tip of his index finger brushed the soft space of skin just below her ear, and when her breath caught on a gasp and her eyelids fluttered he took note, repeating the action – slowly, deliberately, dragging his finger down.

Her head lolled back, baring her throat like an animal exposing a tender belly in submission. Liquid heat pooled in her belly, giving a single sharp throb.

 _Fuck._

She gripped him by the arm, nails biting into the thick muscle in part to steady herself and in part for leverage. Planting the other flat against his chest for balance she shifted her weight forward, twisting until she straddled him. He was rather wider in the thigh than Mike had been, which meant her knees had to be much farther apart to do this than she recollected and turned what might have been no more than a slightly suggestive position downright crude.

And clearly something about this struck him on an instinctual level, for she could feel the muscle beneath her tighten at the new distribution of her weight, the press of her ass, possibly even the way she'd spread her legs to put herself there. His hand had splayed across her back as she'd rearranged herself, apparently in effort to provide support – it fell now to her waist, curving around the arc of her hip as if to hold her back and away from the bulge between his thighs. Or else in the hope to keep her from noticing.

As if she wasn't hyper aware of every part of him that touched her. So much so that she barely felt the painful way her knees were wedged against the frame of the chair.

Yet as decisive as she had felt just a second ago, now she faltered. The nature of conversation between them, and the limits thereof, had never truly bothered her before. It didn't now either, but she wasn't above admitting that his silence was making her a little anxious. She was still unsure whether he actually wanted this or whether she was pushing and he was just being polite or tolerant, and that he couldn't tell her…that she couldn't press him for more than a nod or head shake, worried her. It wasn't just the typical nervousness from being with someone new either, the half-nauseous mix of uncertainty and shyness, but a very real concern of taking advantage.

Women weren't the only ones capable of being coerced into sexual contact under states of dubious consent, and she was painfully cognizant of how much power she held over him. She didn't want to put him in the position of doing something he didn't want just to make her happy, or because he wasn't sure he could tell her not to. Frankly, he might not even _know_ what the heck he thought or felt. She wanted him to want this – want _her._ But she would rather stay as they had been, and stay away, than accidentally force him. God forbid she scar him for life because she couldn't control herself – and _that_ had not been something she'd imagined herself capable of until this exact moment. It would be no different than outright rape, and she couldn't stomach the risk of...she just couldn't.

She wasn't really sure what to do now. Oh, she knew what she wanted to do. She wanted to lick her way down his chest, starting at the throat and ending at that intriguing place still concealed by clothes…but that seemed way more intense than he might be ready for. Given a choice, she would have started things slowly, spend some time just kissing and not much else. But that wasn't an option here. So how did she go about issuing a question he might not yet fully grasp in a way that was clear but not manipulative?

Slowly she let her hand slip down between heavy pectorals, grazing a soft path along his sternum.

Jason's breathing changed, roughened, and for a moment she wavered, wondering if she should just stop altogether. But he didn't appear to want her to. The way he was looking at her; so clearly, _intently_ focused, and with a heat she had seen there only the once.

She didn't think anyone had ever looked at her like that, with such uncontained _hunger_. She had always thought that such a misplaced word to use for desire, an unfitting comparison. Not now. Now she understood there was a reason people used it, for she felt it too – a gnawing, empty yearning that had transcended mere wanting to feel as though if she didn't sate it somehow, it would devour her alive.

Was his mouth open, she wondered? Lips parted in anticipation?

On pure reflex at the thought she wet her own lips and his eyes dropped, following the dart and slide of her tongue. She felt her stomach tighten.

He seemed quite taken with her mouth. They had had a lot of time to study one another, after all, for familiarities to shift and change from simple acknowledgement of existence to curiosity, to fascination of an entirely different kind. She was quite taken with parts of him, too, though her ability to make out details had been greatly hindered up until now.

Her hand drifted lower, trailing down the ridges of his ribs – muscle coiling taut beneath skin at the touch. He shifted slightly, and while she suspected it was more to do with the newness of it than any real discomfort, she asked: "ok?"

She could feel the effort he made to relax, to trust her. He _did_ trust her. He would follow her lead, and she would do her damndest to deserve it.

He nodded, if somewhat stiffly, and she let her fingertips drift lower still to graze the waistband of his heavy workpants.

She saw his throat work, felt the hand at her side twitch. He didn't push at her, or make any other obvious indication of dislike or unease, but there was a hint of something wild and not-quite-sure in his eyes that had her deviating from her original half-plan. The last thing she wanted was to traumatize him more than she likely already had. So instead of setting to them, she bypassed button and zipper entirely to let her palm slide down the hard ridge beneath.

He stiffened, the breath leaving him in a broken rush.

She bent her wrist, dragging her palm back up, pressing ever so slightly, and his grip on her tightened almost painfully in what she was certain must be a plea for her to stop. Yet when she made to remove her hand he seized her wrist and held her there, cupping him through the rough cloth. And _that_ was clear enough to be getting along with. Whether or not he was entirely comfortable, he didn't want her to stop, either. Determined consent wasn't quite the same as enthusiastic, but he was not a child, and he was not simple-minded. She wasn't going to start something and then make his choices for him by not seeing it through when he was quite plainly telling her to.

Gently she stroked with her fingertips, as much an indication of understanding as a continuation, and felt the rigid flesh beneath her twitch. He released a shallow breath and his hand fell away, dropping to the seat of the chair and curling around the edge of it, and the sight of this indomitable man – this great, cataclysmic force – relinquishing the control he clearly held very dear for her was...enthralling.

She watched him closely as her hand slid down, watched his uneven shudder at her touch. When she squeezed, ever so gently, his back arched. Powerful shoulders bunched, the tendons in his neck cording like steel cable. He almost bucked her off, might have succeeded had he not gripped her tightly. So tightly that she was almost positive she was going to bruise down to the bone of her hip and couldn't bring herself to care. She could see the throb of his pulse beneath the skin of his neck and leaned forward, draping an arm over the back of the chair to press her mouth there, breathing in the rich, clean scent of his skin, tasting salt.

A soft sound of pleasure escaped her as her lips parted, the tip of her tongue tracing a slow, hot line up the column of his throat. It was complete impulse, and the response was immediate.

Though there was no voice to give it true tone or texture she felt the groan unfold from deep in his chest – felt as it splintered and his head tossed back, lungs heaving. She felt the spasm deep in his thighs just as it preceded the pulsing throb and the warm rush of the release beneath her palm; fast and hard and nothing short of glorious. And while at first all she felt was the dizzy, soaring high of satisfaction, it curdled swiftly into remorse as rationality bled into her brain.

She drew back, searching for his face. His eyes were wide and wild, and for an awful, sinking second she was sure she shouldn't have done it. _Any_ of it. She had pushed him too far, and way, _way_ too fast.

So much for not traumatizing the poor man.

"I'm so—I'm so sorry, I…are you ok?"

The nod he gave her was loose, downright wobbly – like that of a man intoxicated.

"Did you...like it?"

She didn't know why she felt suddenly shy after what had just happened, but there it was. Just because he'd responded physically didn't necessarily mean he'd enjoyed it, and she wasn't going to assume. Though she probably could have given him a damn moment before pestering.

With notable effort he pried his left hand from around the edge of the chair. There was a faint tremor in his fingers when they curled under her chin and jaw, urging her to meet his eyes, and while he looked a little dazed when he nodded the second time she recognized the deliberateness of this moment of communication. The emphasis in touching her face, in waiting for eye contact.

 _Yes,_ he was saying. _Very much._

His thumb stroked the slope of her chin, a soft, affectionate brush. Soft. Quite unlike the flesh beneath her palm.

It was then that she realized her hand was still resting against his groin, stained dark now and damp, and that he was…still hard. The realization made her throat tighten, made the fine, sensitive muscles tucked between her thighs clench instinctively, gripping at nothing and aching in complaint for it. The wetness followed, a hot rush of it bleeding into the crotch of too-small panties already damp enough to chafe. And holy _god,_ she was so turned on that she physically _hurt_ – the throb between her legs fierce as a wound. So turned on that she couldn't stop the flex of her hand atop the not insignificant shape of the cock beneath his stained fly, couldn't stop the instinctive arch of her lower back to press her greedy cunt down into the broad length of his thigh or the broken gasp that left her at the increase in pressure.

He was so observant, so keen-eyed and watchful and of course he noticed. She could see it in the faint furrow at the inner corners of his eyes, the question that formed as they flickered down to that place veiled by the draping hem of her too-large shirt, the gears turning as he recollected what she had just done to him and fit the pieces together.

What she had just done to him. Which was give him a _hand-job_ through his fucking _pants_.

He shifted faintly underneath her, pressing unintentionally up into her hand. How was he still…? Yeah, it happened, but after the first time?

Scientifically she wasn't sure if there was any real correlation between stamina and biological imperative, but the needy spasm of her vaginal muscles clearly either believed this to be the case or else simply didn't give a damn.

Suddenly it was difficult to breathe. She could feel her own rapid heartbeat in her throat and temples, and…elsewhere, as she eased her hand from his groin. She could feel the line of each of his fingers where they lay against her hip. He was still staring up at her, his pupils blown wide, irises dark mirrors of the same lust clouding her own brain, pooling at the base of her spine and low in her belly.

Well. This had certainly…escalated.

A reflexive shiver chased its way up her spine, a chill that wasn't a chill, and she knew what would follow, knew he couldn't possibly miss the tightening of her nipples when she was wearing a shirt like this with no bra. He was practically at face-level with her chest, for fuck's sake. But he wasn't paying attention to her breasts, even with proximity and rapid breath. He was paying attention to the way she had just squirmed against his lap as she eased her hand from his groin, his eyes once again flicking from the juncture of her thighs back up to her face.

Oh, he was putting it together all right, and already doing better than many men with five times his experience. That was her Jason, though: sharp-eyed, attentive, and clever.

 _Her Jason._

~/~

He was shattering, splitting apart at the seams.

His _brain_ was short-circuiting, spitting sparks like a split wire, his heart pounding fit to burst, and he was utterly _consumed_ with her. The scent of her thick in his lungs, the hot press of her open mouth, her hand – the hand not currently stroking him through the front of his trousers – curled around the back of his neck, at once soothing and overwhelming.

She touched him, touched the flesh that concerned and almost repelled him, as though she knew exactly what it was, as though there was a purpose…and if there was he couldn't think what it might be when he was helpless to do anything but feel. Trapped within an improbable blend of bliss and total agony. He didn't understand how it could be possible to be at once so intensely uncomfortable and to feel so remarkably _good_. But it was. He _did_. The point of pain that wasn't really pain centered in his groin and radiating outward until it became all that he was.

His vision had blurred, both dark and alight with a thousand burning stars as his eyes rolled back into his head and he seemed to break upon the razor edge of oblivion. The pleasure was so violent that it hurt, slicing through every shred of him at once. Yet what followed was an immediate, sweeping relief he could only have described as euphoric.

Every part of him relaxed – places he hadn't even known _could_ relax had relaxed. His joints had all become loose and liquid and his veins awash with a warm…fizziness. It reminded him of what seltzer water felt like against the tongue, both strange and incredibly pleasant.

Was this what people experienced when they mauled one another like they did – groping and rolling around? Was this complex combination of sensation the driving purpose?

If so, no wonder they were always doing it.

Whitney's voice broke through the haze, carrying with it a concern he didn't understand, asking if he was all right as though she didn't know that he had never been more all right.

He could tell from the way his hand had gone lax against her that his fingers had been digging into the soft flesh above her hipbone. How hard had he clutched at her? Enough to hurt? She didn't look as though she was in pain, though he couldn't actually focus enough to interpret the set of her features.

When his eyes cleared it was to find her still watching him with traces of worry. She had been so confident before, so sure in her knowledge of what to do. Now she seemed unsure. Flustered? She looked _nervous_. Why did she look nervous? Did she regret what she had done, regret touching him? Making him feel…whatever that wondrous, nameless euphoria had been? But, no, that wasn't it. He didn't think so, anyway. She looked more like she was waiting to be scolded for having done something wrong. The only reason he knew was because he was intimately familiar with the feeling.

He didn't know quite what to make of that. At least not until she asked her second question.

Had he liked it.

Had he _liked it?_

Even if Jason had possessed the power of speech he seriously doubted his ability to articulate exactly _how much_ he had liked it. Even enough to stress that _liking_ was nowhere near strong enough word. He had to speak through his eyes, through the soft touch he bestowed to her face with a hand still wracked with a fine tremor from nerves that felt like a burned up fuse – in a good way. He had to settle for a nod as pointed as he could make it, and relief that it was enough to ease the doubt creased between her sleek dark brows.

He cupped her chin, warm tenderness flooding him as though injected through his very bloodstream as he looked up into her face, beautiful and familiar. Beloved.

The reason for this…pastime – activity? – didn't lie in the sensation alone, he realized. It was just as much the emotion, the indescribable sense of connection, of belonging. The all-consuming rush of pleasure was well enough, but this…this was far more wondrous.

Whitney fidgeted where she sat astride his legs, shifting as if uncomfortable. Her hips angled down, her breath giving way to a tiny, almost indiscernible noise. In the same moment her hand flexed against his groin, sending a fresh, hot bolt of need searing through him, and in that instant it felt as though something in his brain clicked – at long last – into place.

He was _hungry_ for her. A hunger not of the belly but of his very flesh – in his bones and in his mind, down to whatever crude matter had collected to construct him. And _oh,_ how his body wanted her, strained toward her. Again? Or, still? He didn't know. He just knew that he still throbbed, still whined like an over strained pressure-valve. And she…why did she still look uncomfortable?

She was tense all over, near-vibrating with it, her face flushed and tight as if in pain or nervousness. There was dampness seeping through the leg of his pants, almost like...

His eyes fell, instinctively searching for the source. His brain was quick to think it blood – like the time of the urgent midnight demand for either bathroom or bandages. Only, that didn't seem quite right. He would have smelled blood. But she didn't smell of metal and pain. She smelled of warm skin and lemon- sweetness, and something else. That something he still didn't know how to name.

Had she been injured, hurting, she wouldn't have pressed herself into him the way she had, wouldn't be looking at him the way she was now, lips parted and cheeks flushed pink, the green in her eyes almost completely eliminated by the gold so that they appeared almost aflame.

He studied her face sharply as she removed her hand almost warily from the front of his pants, not needing to look to know there was moisture there too, and of his own making. The exact functionality escaped him, but he could draw the link without her needing to tell him. Was that was this was? If so, then why hadn't she reacted the way he had? How could she _not_ have, had she felt what he had? Why did she still look as though she was nursing a wound, brow creased and jaw tight? Unless…

He glanced back down to place where her thighs met, veiled by the excess length of her shirt. Just as there were differences between the size and shape of their bodies there seemed to be differences here as well. She didn't feel the way he did, but silken, pliable, as she was everywhere.

If he touched her the way she had touched him…

The heat coiling anew in Jason's belly gave an enthusiastic clench at the thought, yet he hesitated, suddenly cowed.

What was he doing? He had no right to look at her like this, let alone _touch_ her. But, no, that wasn't it. It wasn't that he had no right, rather that _she_ had every right. She should not have wanted him…but she did. There was no way to calculate his awe. And _he_ had no right to refuse her, even if any small, insignificant part of him had wanted to. Which it vehemently, _violently_ , did not.

Cautiously he lifted right leg, bending his knee ever so slightly, experimentally. The response was instant. He watched, entranced, as her head tipped back, her eyes fluttering closed in unmistakable relish. Her back arched, pressing the soft, burning place between her legs against him, and emitting that sound – that breathy, gasping sigh that was both and neither and exquisite. His fingers curled into the cloth draping her hip, gathering the excess to lift it out of the way and exposing the sleek, supple flesh of her thighs. The light was dim, though not so dim that the dazed wanting in her face was veiled, or the contrast of his great killer's hands against skin smooth as milk and honey.

He smoothed the hem of the shirt back, revealing the pale blue garment he had glimpsed beneath – trimmed in lace and fit tight to her shape – and he couldn't make out much through it, but judging by the way he went slightly lightheaded, something buried deep within him recognized even what he could not clearly see with immediate and instinctual reverence.

Unthinking, he traced the edge of the silky cotton at the crease where thigh met body, and he could feel the incredible heat emanating from her there. Burning hot as fever.

"Oh, god," she whimpered, and he paused, checking her face quickly.

He knew the phrase (in exclamation form) purely as a reaction to fear, to imminent death. But that wasn't why she'd said it. It was trepidation, and it was desire.

Encouraged, he turned his wrist, copying the motion she had used with him but far gentler. She had displayed far more knowledge of how his body worked than he had of hers, and as intent as he was on learning, he could not abide the thought of hurting her even by accident.

Still, the grip of her knees about his thighs was not insignificant, nor was that of her hand at his forearm. Small she might be, fragile, breakable – she was not, however, weak.

His fingertips met moisture, slick and warm, soaked through the cloth that shielded her. And as if touching had forged some kind of direct pathway he could smell her as he hadn't even before – rich and earthy, honey and salt. Would it taste so, were he to bring his fingers to his mouth?

More importantly, had he ever wanted to do anything so badly in his life?

She canted her hips again, causing that soft, sweet place to press into the heel of his hand…and he had thought himself hard before. He'd had _no idea_.

~/~

Pleasure for a woman was always a weighted thing, conditional. Dangerous. There was risk for her in wanting, not only the risk of pregnancy, but of her desire being met with judgment, condemnation, or worse. She had to be careful what things she asked for, else she be deemed too easy, too frigid, of not meeting expectation, and punished for it. It wouldn't always come right away, either, but hours or days later when an action made in a moment of abandon might suddenly become a weapon to be used against her.

Whitney had never been abused outright, but she had always been mindful of the fact that the men in her life had the potential to become abusive even without meaning to be – and more than likely as a result of factors beyond their control. Maybe it had been self-sabotage, setting all her potential relationships up to inevitable failure. Maybe it had been a wise response to unpleasant truths fortified as such by words passed on from other women. Maybe neither. Or maybe both. At first it had been because she was young and silly and scared. And then it had been because she had learned of the dangers, the weighted nature of her own wants laid upon her by a system that sought to control her. Even those who might love her.

She had made her peace with it as she had with bleeding every month – with a bitterness that grew resigned, and then unthinking with time. It was the way of things, and it was far less work and pain to navigate it than to try and rail against it, at least at this point in her life.

That was what she'd believed. Right up until she hadn't.

It had occurred to her before that the same social conditioning that formed the foundation for all that had left Jason almost entirely untouched. She had intended to think on that, to consider what it might mean, and hadn't really done so. At least, not consciously. _Sub_ consciously, however, was a different story.

The irony did not escape her: that this man brought up knowing only the most primitive elements of social conduct had treated her with consistently more real respect than almost every man raised within her own modern world (abduction aside). Even her own brother had needed repeated assurances that she would be fine if he left her when the proof of her words had been right in front of his eyes – not because he intended to slight her, but because he had been raised to see her as requiring his protection even, and perhaps especially, from herself.

Due to simple circumstance, Jason was the only person truly capable of taking her exactly as she was. He didn't see her as less than, as weak or silly, or irrational – even when she actually was being ridiculous. The only deference he ever made was to her physical differences; her size, her strength, the length of her limbs in comparison to his own. Other than that, to his mind, she was every bit as capable as he was in every way. And if he was overly cautious or protective or anything of the like, it was because she was important to him, not because he felt he had to coddle her on principle. She hadn't realized how much she had wanted that until it was right in front of her, and she thought she might have recognized that part of him before anything else. Certainly before the pesky ovaries had gotten involved.

Of one other thing she was certain. Jason wasn't going to care that she had more experience than he did, that she had been with someone else before him. He wasn't going to think her a slut. The concept didn't exist to him. Frankly, he seemed pretty thrilled with her knowledge, and the absolute rarity that made him was both sad and incredibly freeing.

She might not have cognitively realized all this if it hadn't been for how unguarded she had just been, how content she had been to cross a line into territory that should have scared her, completely unafraid of reprisal because she had known for the first time in her life, with absolute certainty, that it wouldn't come.

She could be exactly who she was, want what she wanted, and he would never punish her for it.

He shifted, pressing tentatively up with his knee into the throb between her legs, striking sparks. It _hurt –_ in the most delicious way – and she arched into the flare of pleasure, her nails biting into the flesh just below his elbow.

It never felt like this. It had never been better with Mike than it had been on her own, at least in terms of physical pleasure. It had been good in other ways, the sense of connection, of bonding, but never both.

This was both.

His hands were at her hips, pulling up the overlong hem of her stupid shirt, and pulling her half an inch closer to him. It wasn't intentional. He did it unconsciously, in effort to remove the obstacle, but that was perhaps why it struck her the way it did. Holy hell _,_ but he was strong. It should have scared her – he could literally hold her down, do whatever he wanted with her, and there would be nothing she could do to stop him unless he chose to relent. And that should _not_ have sent a jagged throb of lust straight to her cunt. But it did.

His skin was hot against the curve of her hip as he folded the fabric back and out of the way. His other hand lowered, touching the stupid lacy trim of the borrowed underwear not an inch from where she was literally aching for him to touch her. His gaze was cast down, studying her, and surely he couldn't know what he was looking at but the dark fog of heat in his eyes would have had her believe otherwise.

" _Oh, god…"_

He glanced back up to her face, holding her gaze as his hand slid down, not quite cautious, not meaning to tease. It was slow and tentative, careful. He was trying not to hurt her, unsure exactly how he should touch her. It wasn't his fault that she was wound so tight that the faint graze across her clit was enough to make her want to cry.

She had meant to sit still and let him explore her at his own pace. But she was far too into him, and too far gone to wait.

Reaching between them she gripped his hand. He went instantly still, clearly thinking she was saying no – and god as her witness she could have fallen in love with him just for that – and she fought to muster the breath to reassure him, but she couldn't. Wordless, she cupped the back of his hand and moved it to the top of her underwear, tucking their intertwined fingers beneath the fabric and wishing she'd had the forethought to take them off before hurling herself at him.

She jerked when he reached her, for all that she had guided him there – hot and wet and swollen – her exhale almost more akin to a sob than a moan. Pleasure burned, bleeding through her veins, curling up her spine. Her hips arced, pressing her clit into the heel of his palm. Her vision went white.

His eyes were trained to her face with the focus of a hunter, so attentive to the shifts of her expression as she shaped his fingers with her own and showed him how to move. He hardly blinked at all, watching intently as she rocked into his hand, into the glide of his fingers against her. He was utterly absorbed in her – in watching her, touching her, drinking in what it was to be there with her.

It was, without a doubt, the hottest thing she had ever experienced.

Her face was burning. The embarrassment was silly, she knew that. He had no expectations, no preconceived notions of how this worked. She was flustered because this was so out of the realm of normal for her and yet she was liking it as much as she was, half of which was because her own hand was still entwined with his, and he showed no inclination to shoo her away. She had no doubts that he was both driven and perceptive enough to figure it out on his own from this point just from her reactions alone, but he seemed to feel the same intense sense of connection that she did. Which just made it that much hotter.

Whitney didn't actually remember the last she had done this – kissed or touched or anything – without something else going on in the back of her mind. Grocery lists, errands to run, whether or not she'd remembered to turn on the crockpot that morning. There was nothing in her head now. Nothing but the precise texture of his skin against hers, the soft, slick sounds of her own wetness, his breathing hard and close to panting, seemingly matched to the sharp, shallow pace of her whimpering gasps. It was downright vulgar.

She came hard and fast, her entire body convulsing as she tipped headfirst into the blinding, building _scream_ of her own pleasure.

Seconds or hours later she collapsed against him, boneless as a ragdoll. Her hand curved around the back of his neck, fingers curling into the wispy strands of his hair, and gripped as though to save herself from drowning.

Her pulse was a frantic thunder in her ears, her thighs trembling where they bracketed his. The only thing preventing her from slipping to the floor in a mindless heap the broad hand against her back, and was it her imagination, or was he trembling too?

 _Holy…_

She couldn't finish it – couldn't even curse in her own _mind_.

Well, she had just experienced the single most powerful orgasm of her life. Her bones had been reduced to splinters. She supposed an inability to string thoughts together came with the territory.

For long moments she just rested there, her head against his shoulder as her lungs re-learned how to go about breathing, and he let her. Gently he extricated their joined hands from her panties. Disentangling himself from her limp fingers he looped his arm about her waist, his other hand splayed warm and secure between her shoulder blades. She knew he was still hard beneath her, though she couldn't directly feel it. But he didn't seem inclined to do anything about it, perfectly content, it seemed, just to hold her.

At some point she felt his head angle toward her, the little nicks and scratches marring his mask catching at her hair. Then the slight pressure as he rested his face against the side of her head.

 _I've got you,_ it seemed to say. Or, so she told herself. She couldn't bring herself to imagine what else it might have said.

She lifted her head to look at him and found the softness in his eyes – the same as before, and yet…somehow quite different. Affection, and also devotion. Wonderful, beautiful. Damning. It hit her as it hadn't before, now that the throes of pleasure were fading to a pleasant glow, what had just happened.

She pushed herself shakily backward and clambered from his lap…only for her knees to give out as soon as her feet met the floor.

She staggered, emitting a muted squeak, but Jason had her before reflex reduced her to flailing, great hands folding around her waist to hold her steady until she could stand on her own.

When he let her go it was with an air of reluctance, as though he would much rather pull her back to him, keep her cradled there against him indefinitely. He didn't, but she imagined he was probably considering it when she smoothed the shift back down, and while he tracked her shaky steps across the room and up the stairs.

It was not an easy trek. She was unsteady; her spine was tingling and her knees were weak, like some newly born animal with too much leg to handle, and she was having difficulty focusing on where to put her feet, as though she couldn't make out the dimensions of the steps beneath her. It was like she had been fucked so thoroughly that she had been robbed of her ability to walk, to think, to _see straight_. Jesus, he hadn't even actually fucked her. Not yet, anyway.

 _Ok, stop. Stop right there._

Planting a hand on the door to the tiny bathroom she shoved it open and half-stumbled inside.

It wasn't regret which had driven her from him. It wasn't. Simply the need for space in order to think and an equal need to see to the absolute mess she now was. The borrowed panties had been marginally uncomfortable before, but they were completely saturated and chafing something awful, though she did suspect they had been stretched out beyond repair. Jason had big hands, after all. Big, dexterous, and quick to learn.

 _Fucking hell._

Thankfully the toilet paper under the sink was the kind that came in individually wrapped rolls and therefore had not been reduced to wads of dust. It wasn't as good as a washcloth, but the cloths folded neatly atop the matching pair of hand towels were at least two shades paler than the avocado green they were supposed to be and therefore out of the question. Slipping from the ruined underwear she dropped them into the little metal waste canister, cleaned up as best she could, then sank limply onto the toilet. Just sat there, head at once completely empty and full of noise.

What had she just done? In her recklessness she had bound him to her, irrevocably. He would never get her out from under his skin now. And neither would she.

She had no idea how long she spent there, ruminating over mistakes she couldn't bring herself to regret all the while condemning herself for them. Long enough for the dizzy high of incredibly good sex to wane, for her eyes to grow heavy and her temples begin to ache.

When she made her way back downstairs it was to find Jason seated on the floor, back against the front of the couch, his face to the gradually dying fire. Next to him, she noticed, he had reassembled her bed-substitute; the motley assortment of cushions and blankets carefully arranged, situated just near enough to the hearth that she could tell it was in intentional proximity to the warmth.

She had to work to swallow past the knot in her throat.

There was no way he didn't hear her, but he didn't turn his head as she padded along the back of the couch to where she had been keeping her bag of clothes. The pair of clean underwear she had laid there for the morning still had a hint of dampness clinging stubbornly to the fibers, but it wasn't enough to be either problem or annoyance, and she quickly slipped them on before rounding the other side of the couch opposite from him.

He was sitting at an angle to the hearth in order to stretch his legs out in front of him, body tilted inward toward the pillow end of the tidy bed-nest. He had put his shirt back on, and while a part of her instantly mourned the loss, she was also grateful for the sliver of sanity it granted back to her.

He tilted his head to look at her, at once greeting and cautious. Would she rather he had left, he was wondering, and would she now ask him to leave? He seemed to have understood her need to clean up, but she was not above admitting that her manner of going about it had been less than gracious, or clear. She must have seemed upset, and he had been hoping that wasn't the case – or else that he could soothe it by meeting her with a place to rest, because of course he had. He would know, as he knew so much just by intuition alone, that she needed to sleep.

It was strange…she had felt anxious, almost to the point of nausea, up until the very second he had looked at her, wondering how she was going to deal with any of it – with him, or herself, or any of it. But now she was just tired, and none of the rest mattered.

Crouching, she folded back the blankets, noting the brilliant use of the sleeping bag, opened all the way up, as a buffer between the couch cushions rather than just a sheet. She lay down, curled up under the pile of blankets, and nestled her head upon the pillow next to his hip. And maybe it should have been awkward, weird, to lay like that with him seated next to her, above her. But it wasn't. She just felt that same sense of absolute safety she recalled from the lakeside, secure in his presence, calmed, and unafraid.

Ever since she could remember there had been nights when her heart seemed to go to war with her mind. Sometimes it seemed the most difficult and agonizing decisions were made in the dark, where the struggles between what was known and what was felt had room to spread out and realign. Most of the time nights like these were spent in restless wakefulness and were a far cry off from restful.

It wasn't that way tonight.

The last thing burned into her consciousness the warm red-orange glow of dimming firelight and the faint touch of a gentle hand stroking her hair. And then she slept. Easy, and deep.

* * *

 **NOTES:**

First off - credit to E.B. White for the line from "Charlotte's Web."

Second off - you're welcome. (Just kidding! Sort of…)

This entire chapter is RIDICULOUS and I don't give a single solitary fuck. I'm a girl who likes her long, sprawling, intricate smut scenes because I like the way it focuses like the actual acts would in real life (just me? Maybe so). But I understand if it's not to everyone's taste. We probably won't have anything quite this insane again simply because this was a slooooowww goddamn burn finally hitting its boiling point and there were a lot of firsts. It'll still be ridiculous, though. That I can absolutely promise.

A couple things I want to touch on: the first being my use of the c-word.

I realize this is very often used as an insult and has been pretty negatively coded. The reason I use it is that I pretty much hate the words most often used to refer to lady-bits in writing. I don't like the flowery sugary euphemisms in historical novels unless they're being used as literal descriptors (see almost any floral Georgia O'Keefe painting if you don't know what I mean), and I hate pretty much every slang word that exists. If we go with pure anatomical language we're stuck with bits and pieces or internal parts, which doesn't work. So. This is literally how I came to grudgingly accept and then grow to like the c-word. It has a nice pragmatic, somewhat dirty but not gross slant to it rather like 'cock' does for the gentlemen. Again, I realize coding is a thing and not everyone feels the same way, but as far as I can reason, the problem with the greatest insult we can call anyone being a reference to biologically female genitals goes way deeper than whatever specific word we use. So I'm choosing to reclaim this one.

Moving on.

Most of Jason's scars are pulled out of my head and nowhere else, although I'm sure some happen to coincide with events from some of the movies – that's coincidence. The only one that's purposeful is the crazy shoulder scar which is a direct reference to Part 2 and Ginny's not so successful try with the machete.

Also - record POV switches with least amount of time passing because SEX. And I'm ridiculous. The pacing of this was actually really difficult for me. I had a lot of little pieces written out and wanted them staggered so as not to interrupt the flow too much but I'm not sure I succeeded, so this is was a bit of a challenge. Although I still managed to crank the majority of this sucker out pretty damn fast due to a combination of feverish motivation and a weekend quarantined at home instead of being at Comic Con because of the Coronavirus insanity. Worth it? Yeah, actually, kind of.

There's a segment in here that might read as anti-patriarchal feminist preaching, and while I know it's not the first time that's come up in this story, I just wanted to explain. Whitney's perceptions as described there mirror my own very closely. The older I get the more aware I am of this particular stain on the world I live in and the harder it is not to see it or the effects of it. I had an interaction at work not three days ago that falls right into this, because I didn't find a joke from a 60+ year old white man funny and didn't laugh I was therefore labeled as sour with no sense of humor. Intended as abuse? Probably not. But it still was. I don't mean to come across as preachy, but it's also a part of living as female and that includes how relationships and sex are approached. I don't believe in veiling over that, or the importance of it. So it's in here. (Also it's just fucking sexy, ok?)

If you haven't heard it, I strongly suggest you listen to "Body Language" by POESY, the title of which is this chapter's namesake and which I listened to on repeat intermixed with a few other mood-songs. Listen to it and tell me it's not perfection.

Should I up the rating for this fic? I don't fully know where my lines between M and E are…I didn't feel this was quite to that point yet, but maybe I'm wrong? Let me know what you think.

Anyway, I hope the dam-breaking was worth the wait. I'm both exhausted and relieved, and eager to keep going. I will warn you though, I have a feeling the next chapter might be a bit of a wait. I've attempted tackling some of it already and it's proving difficult. So please be patient!

And on that note, I thank you all for reading, for your sweet and delightful comments (comments give me LIFE) and kudos and love. I adore you. Thank you. 3

Until next time!


	21. Ain't No Sunshine

**.**

 **CHAPTER 21  
** Ain't No Sunshine

~/13/~

 **Day 40**

While he had gone many a night under the sky, this had been the first Jason had ever spent under any roof other than that of his childhood home.

He had listened to the quiet, steady pattern of Whitney's breathing, the rustle of cloth when she shifted beside him in her sleep. He hadn't really looked at her much. A glance every once in a while, as though subconsciously he sought to make sure she was still there. But for the most part he simply listened, staring into the fading embers in the hearth as they grew cold, and wishing he knew how to keep the morning from coming.

The painful, needy pulse between his legs had eased after a while, tamed as much by the peaceful contentment in being there with her as anything else. And it had been peaceful, but he was not content.

He had once likened himself to a dog tasting blood, yet he'd been only on the cusp of understanding just how true that was.

He hadn't been able to get the image out of his head: of her moving above him, sinuous and hypnotic, her face contorted in an ecstasy that defied words. Couldn't rid himself of how it had felt to have her guiding his hand against the hot, silken shape of her. How it had felt as she'd shattered under his touch, as she'd folded against him, weak and shuddering and limp. He still bore the scent of her on his fingers. Still carried the weight of her soft, slender shape between his arms. She had been by far the most beautiful thing he had ever seen.

When she had pulled herself free, he had been near to overpowered by the need to bring her back to him. It had been her expression which stopped him, which had the sun-warm glow of adoration shriveling inside him like the charred edges of paper cast to the flame. He still didn't understand what that look had meant. She had appeared almost afraid, though he couldn't think why. How could she feel fear after something so wondrous? Then he had begun to wonder, as she tugged her shirt back down to cover herself and retreated up the stairs, if it wasn't fear at all, but something worse.

He was well acquainted with his ignorance, he knew there were things at work here which he was blind to – social customs and expectations that he could never hope to satisfy. He could only assume what they'd done was somehow related to mating behavior as it was in humans. It was the only thing he could think of that explained the powerful, primal need he was suddenly engulfed by to care for her; to see to her needs the way the animals did, in the way of wolves or birds, bringing food and nesting materials, grooming, soothing. He wanted to spend the rest of _time_ right where she was, with her gentle weight draped across him. He never wanted to be anywhere else again. Never wanted her out of his sight, or his reach.

But if that was so, he could only therefore assume that he had proven in some way less than adequate. She was familiar with his shortcomings. More than familiar. Yet she had chosen him anyway, hadn't she?

Unless she now regretted her choice, her actions. Unless she now wished she had never opened the door to let him in from the rain.

He barely understood mating as it was to beasts let alone people, he knew nothing of what humans typically did or thought, or felt, where such matters were concerned. He had no way to know if any of this was even _close_ to what was going on. It seemed wrong to go after her, even in the interest of granting her the opportunity to order him gone. It seemed more wrong to simply go, to not be there when she came down – if she ever did. Instinct bade him stay, intuition steered him toward caution, and each seemed skewed by an all-too human worry. So he had done the only thing he could think of, which was to lean into that compulsion to provide.

He had seen the dishes in the kitchen, caught the smell of food – fresh, not stale – which told him she had eaten before his arrival. She didn't need food. It was possible that use of a bathroom was what had driven her up the stairs. That was what he hoped, at least, and not that she had simply wanted to be as far away from him as she could get while remaining inside and sheltered. Sleep had been the only thing he couldn't account for, and while it was also possible she had found somewhere to do that upstairs as well, the cursory glance he'd taken of the room before settling into the chair had told him this was likely not the case.

Rising had proven difficult. His body had still been strained and burning and he had moved stiffly at first, forced to grit his teeth against the discomfort of trousers much too tight at the groin. But he had managed, dragging his discarded shirt back over his head and setting to reassembling the bedding she had shoved to the back of the couch as best he could. And then he had settled in to wait.

As long as it took.

A part of him had been relieved to hear the faint creak of the stairs. The rest had been anxious and desperate not to show it. He exercised brutal force of will to keep from turning immediately, to give her the choice of how to handle the situation. If he didn't move, he couldn't break yet more rules he didn't know. Could he? Or…had he already in his ignorance?

When he'd heard her steps move around the end of the couch opposite from where he'd planted himself to wait for her, he allowed himself to look.

For the space of several seconds she just looked at him, and while he could not read the exact nuances of all the emotions written across her face, he could tell with almost certainty that none of them were anger, rejection, or regret.

Saying nothing, she sank to the jumble of cushions and coverings he had arranged for her. She had wrapped herself up in the blankets as though cold, and he had been glad of his foresight to place the bedding as close to the hearth as was safe. She had lain on her side, face to the dying fire, her head upon the pillow right beside his outstretched leg. And while she had said nothing of the kind, he had been unable to think of it as anything but accepting – that this, at least, he had done correctly.

He had extended a hand, running his palm back along the crown of her head to smooth the tousle of her hair, and then again simply for the sake of it, stroking as his mother had done to ease his path to sleep when it had been elusive. Her eyes had been closed, but he would have sworn he'd felt her sigh and settle beneath his hand; and the sense of utter fulfilment he'd known then had been nothing short of incredible.

 _This,_ he had thought as he'd sat there watching over her as she slept. He wanted this. He wanted her company, her cleverness, the bright flash of her eyes when she teased, her smile and voice and laughter, her sorrow and her temper, her joy, her pleasure, and _this_. He wanted it forever.

But he couldn't have it. He shouldn't have had as much as he'd been given, purely by logic, and he wished she hadn't given him even that. It would have been hard enough before, but after this...it was going to be impossible to heal.

He had stayed because he couldn't think of anywhere else he would rather be. He had left because he could no longer bear it.

When dawn broke, Jason was on the porch to see the sky warm and brighten, watching weak sunlight begin to stream through the trees as it rose, wishing in vain that he could force it back down beneath the horizon and make it stay there.

He was a mess; a tangled snarl of desire and hope and fear, a knot-work of nerves and worry and dread shaped like a man. A dog tasting blood. Neither noble nor good.

It had never seemed possible for him to want something more than he had wanted his mother returned to him. He had gone so long with that sole thorn of want lodged so deeply within him that he hadn't noticed when it scabbed over, became a scar that ached only sometimes instead of constantly. There was a certain sense in that. Parents separated from their offspring in nature. They died, made way for new life. That was the way of things. It had been more the _way_ his mother had been taken, and how young he had been, than that she had been gone which had hurt so much. He could see that now; perspective a gift of time and distance and the introduction of something to shift his perception on what it was he had so badly wanted in the first place.

Wants could not be evenly laid out and measured. They were not equivalent to each other. They were not static, unshifting things. Jason was no longer the boy he had once been, and while it didn't mean he loved her any less, he no longer truly knew who his mother had been. Had he been able to bring her back, he would have. Absolutely and without question. But if he must choose between giving Pamela back her life and keeping Whitney, he knew what his choice would be…and it would not have been his mother.

But that would have been a far easier choice than the one before him now.

He couldn't bear the idea of going back to what he had been: empty, a ghost, a shell of a soul haunting the surface of an earth that no longer wanted him. Consumed by his aloneness, trapped in the dark. Without her.

So, what, then? Did he drag her back down into the dark underground and chain her there? Force her to stay, a bright bird locked in a cage, and watch her grow to hate him as she once had? He could stomach the thought of her hatred even less than the thought of her leaving, and the idea of forcing her back into chains made him feel physically ill.

She was everything he could not control. He had grown to love her for it, and by the time he had realized it his time with her had already been running out. Even as she had sat with him, touched him, even as she had looked at him with that soft warmth he could almost imagine was love, he had known it would change nothing. He should have been grateful, content, even – he had been granted a taste of pure happiness. For the space of a night he had belonged to her. Like in the storybook read to him long ago; beauty had kissed him, and with her kiss had transformed him. Into what he didn't know. Something different…better. He should have been grateful. Instead he felt as though he were bleeding from a belly wound.

She had a life waiting for her somewhere out there in the world that had long since passed him by, a life that he could never be a part of beyond this point. He was no longer of that world, and however much he might have wanted to be again, for her, he didn't have that power. He got to have known her, but he didn't get to keep her.

So he must bleed.

And thus, the best night of Jason's withered life was also the very worst.

~/~

She must have known.

She _must_ have.

With each day she had been struggling progressively more and more with a choice that should have been becoming easier, not harder. With each day she had felt her barriers sliding, the lines – once so clear –blurring, her perceptions of what she should do and what she wanted to do becoming so helplessly intertwined that she couldn't tell the difference anymore. That alone should have been enough for her to see. She wasn't entirely sure she hadn't.

She had been balanced on the edge of a precipice for far longer than she'd thought – long before firelight and pent-up frustration had mixed and dashed her inhibition to the floor as decisively as any alcohol. A mistake, she had thought it. A heated, impulsive decision made on fuck-it logic instead of reason and an utter lack of self-control. She would regret it come morning. She would regret her haste, her poor judgment, and worst of all, her selfishness.

Whitney was no stranger to regret. She had made plenty of decisions she'd ended up wishing she hadn't when she stood at the epicenter of the results settled around her. She had expected this to be just one more in the string of them. Yet as she woke slowly and dazedly from a sleep deeper and better than any she'd had in three solid years, she knew with crystal clarity that it had _not_ been a mistake.

The first thing she did when she began to slip back into the land of the living was to stretch an arm up over her head, reaching almost entirely without conscious awareness for the body that she remembered having been there. Her fingers curled into nothing but air, and she felt her brow crease with a frown half a second before she wrenched her eyes open, turning onto her side to peer over her pillow to the space of floor where Jason had been sitting as she'd drifted.

He wasn't there. But that wasn't what made her stomach pitch in her stomach. It was that she wanted him to be.

And that some part of her, somewhere, had known she would.

There were so many reasons why she shouldn't. So many reasons she should feel remorse, feel guilt, for what she'd done. Not the least of which was for Mike's sake.

Poor Mike. She had been so hard on him in her thoughts of late, when he hadn't truly deserved it. Whatever else had been true about their relationship at the time, they had still been together technically. His last act had been to protect her, shoving her bodily up into the bathtub to get her off the floor and away from the blade slicing through it. His last words had been spent choked with his own blood, telling her to run. And she'd gone and screwed his murderer – or as good as. But as sorry as she was for his dying, for the waste, for the loss, and after all she had been very fond of him once; she just couldn't bring herself to feel guilty.

Nor could she feel bad for allowing herself the joy she'd felt during her time here. She had not betrayed her dying mother by feeling something other than pain or grief, by doing anything other than fighting viciously to get home to her bedside.

" _You can't spend your life in here waiting for me to die."_

Ellen would not have held her daughter in contempt for doing just that, even, perhaps especially, if it had involved being so happy.

And Whitney _had_ been happy. Happier than she remembered being since some indefinable point in middle school when she'd still been clinging to the last vestiges of childhood. Happy, and safe, and free. There was an irony there that she was not immune to, but she supposed there was also something poetic in it – to have been set free by the same force that had once put her in a literal cage.

Rolling onto her back, Whitney squinted up into the light pouring in from the tall windows at the back of the room. It was early still, maybe ten, ten-thirty. But she didn't know how long it would take her to get to the gas station, and she didn't want to have to rush.

She had to go. She owed it to Clay to explain, for the sake of the shit he'd seen, if nothing else. But also because he was her brother and she loved him, and she didn't want him to worry needlessly – especially not if that worry made him come charging back into the camp attempting an even more misguided rescue. She had to go, because if Mom was still alive then she needed to be there, for as much time as she had left. And yet as much as those things were true, she realized as she lay there, blinking into the morning sun with one hand resting against the space of floor upon which Jason had sat while she fell asleep, that the feeling she'd had after coaxing Clay to go – the hollow, empty gnawing in her belly she'd had at the thought of leaving – was still there.

She hadn't been able to stomach the idea of going then, and while in hindsight she knew she had already been hip-deep in feelings by then, now…now she was all but drowning in them. Now it was impossible to think of walking away from him and never coming back; and it wasn't because she felt obligated out of some sense of duty a'la an Edwardian gentleman sticking by a girl he'd deflowered (as amusing as that comparison was). She thought she must have known, somewhere, deep down, that once she had refused to leave him the first time, she had been making the kind of choice which would irrevocably change the shape of her future.

There was a reason women tended to link sex and emotion so tightly together. It was an evolutionary necessity to ensure and strengthen bonding. Intellectually she knew that. But she also knew that the presence of one did not negate the other, just as the evolutionary purpose didn't make it less real.

She had been able to tell just by the way he'd held her after, tender and possessive and sweet, that if he did understand mating as it was in animals, then he would be the kind that did so for life. She had seen it in his eyes when she had pushed away, when he had looked at her like she was the only woman he could ever want and he would give everything he was to have her. And all she had wanted to do was sink into his arms, curl up there, and say yes.

The force of her own feeling had scared her. That, she realized now, was what had sent her fleeing before her nerves had stopped singing and her knees regained the ability to hold weight.

She had seen how it would be easy for him to become so deeply attached so quickly; the pattern of his life was spent as a string between moments, as in nature, as in simpler times – or so she assumed – more important decisions were more easily made simply because time was such an enemy. But she had not been raised that way. She had been shaped to question quick decisions made in passion, to pour over potential futures and possible paths to take and the dangers therein. Often to the point where she ended up talking herself out of half the things she wanted. There were reasons for that. Perfectly sound, rational, and important reasons to step back, to exercise thought and planning over impulse…still, she found herself wondering at what point she had stopped listening to her gut.

Whitney rose with a quiet sigh and went to dress, pausing in the midst of pulling on her jeans.

Bruises shaded the outer edges of her knees, dull indigo and relatively painless, but fresh. She straightened, peering down at herself. Sure enough, as she'd suspected there would be, another bruise spread wide across her left hip. It was mild to the eye, identifiable only by a faint, almost rosy discoloration. She felt it more than she could see it, a hint of under-surface ache right where he'd gripped her.

Seeing it brought her a weird rush of fondness. She wasn't sure most people would have approved, but she didn't mind the marks, or the barely-there pain of them. He hadn't meant to hurt her, he'd just been…distracted, and the results had been more than worth the cost.

Unbidden her mind recalled it: the way his hand had molded to her shape, searing against her skin, clutching at her as his back bowed and his silence limned with sound her bones could hear even as her ears could not. The way his bare chest had heaved, deep and broad and powerful, and the way he had touched her, so intent, so _reverent._ The way he'd looked at her right before she had come apart upon his fingertips.

God, she wanted that again. She wanted what had come before it; time spent in soft, peaceful company with a book and a warm fire on a chilly evening. She wanted what had come after. Closeness and comfort and…love.

And that's exactly what it was. He couldn't look at her like that, like she was home to him, and not love her. She hadn't wanted to see it, hadn't wanted to think about it, because if she acknowledged that then she would have to acknowledge that she might very well be half in love with him herself. And that…actually, she couldn't quite put together why that would have been such a bad thing. Not anymore.

She had been spending all this time under the assumption that she had to make a choice between two separate futures. But what if she didn't have to choose? What if she didn't have to give this up – whatever this was – and still do right by her mom? Could she still have the peace, the chance at a new start, the new, delicate thing there was between them? If she could coax him from killing once, could she again? She couldn't be sure, but even just a thread of possibility was still a calculable amount.

She had an opportunity here that went deeper than her own life and her own wants, and if she could lessen the damage done by so many years of pain and anger even by a little…that was enough for her.

Jason wasn't outside as she'd hoped he would be, though she tried not to let it worry her as she walked to the bathroom building to wash her face and brush her teeth and so forth since all her things were still there. Surely he was just otherwise occupied and not gone because she had hurt him with her badly-timed freak out. After all he'd stayed last night, had gone so far as to make her bed back up for her.

And that was another thing. Jason was clearly a nurturer at heart. He had never taken care of her to get something out of it, but because it was right and because he wanted to. While her modern, independent self might have bristled at the idea that she might need someone to take care of her, after spending so much time removed from the conveniences and pressure of modern society she didn't mind admitting that she kind of liked it. It was like a weird sociological experiment: how long did it take a human to revert back to their more basic needs and impulses. Except that as much as she might like being cared for, she had also wanted someone she could care for in return. And that wasn't bestial nature. That was human.

When she caught a look at herself in the mirror it was as if she was looking back at a moment over six weeks in the past, when she had been a much different person in the exact same clothes right down to the underwear. It was a little eerie, until she looked more closely and noted all the little changes. Changes not just in the state of her clothes – permanently stained and torn in some places – but in her face and bearing. She didn't hold herself the way she had then. She wasn't carrying those invisible marks of marathon exhaustion and early-onset grief. She looked different.

She _was_ different.

Jason was waiting for her when she got back, a stoic great sentinel at the porch steps, and for the first time she allowed herself to fully acknowledge the warmth which unfurled within her at the sight of him.

"Good morning," she greeted, suddenly shy. She wanted to hug him, to fold herself into the steady mass of him, but wasn't sure if that was appropriate…which was stupid, since she'd had her hand on his cock not all that long ago. Still, doubt was pretty normal for this particular stage of a relationship.

He didn't give her a chance to work up the nerve to go for it anyway. As soon as she was close enough to have flung herself at him he extended his right arm, holding out the bag she hadn't noticed he was carrying.

 _Her_ bag.

"Where did…?" The question was halfway out of her mouth before she caught it, reshaped it to something she didn't already know. "You kept this the whole time?"

He jostled the bag gently, indicating for her to take it, which she did – her hands sliding against the slippery nylon of the straps. It was hers all right. The faded plum purple backpack she'd found at a thrift store with its broken top zipper which she had replaced with the stupid little dinosaur keychain so she could still work it. It didn't carry a lot, the rest of the things she had brought with her on the camping trip would have been much more useful for her needs as they had been up until now, with clothes and food and camping gear. But if she'd had to choose, this would have been the bag she wanted now.

She peered inside, finding the contents utterly undisturbed. Water bottle, sunscreen, tiny first aid kit, three granola bars, film canister stuffed with ibuprofin, hoodie, vaseline, housekeys, and…yes, tucked inside the interior pocket where she'd put it. _Wallet._

"Thank you," she smiled up at him. "This will be a lot of help."

Once again she had the impulse to hug him, and she might have this time, overthinking awkwardness be damned, had she not suddenly had the impression that such a gesture would not, in fact, be welcomed. He stood stiff and straight as an arrow, looming the way he hadn't seemed to in a long time. The tenderness of last night was gone, replaced by an almost formal coolness, a distance he projected like an aura.

Dismay and panic scrabbled at her insides like claws. Oh, Jesus, she _had_ fucked it up. She should have explained, should have taken the time to make sure he understood.

"What's wrong?" she asked, forgetting in her haste to know that he wouldn't be able to answer the open-ended question.

Jason shook his head, a tight, short motion that she suspected was to put her off from asking any more.

 _Nothing._

Nothing her ass.

"Are you—" she struggled, trying to formulate the tangle of urgent questions in her head into a manageable form that he could work with. "Is it about…last night?"

His eyes flashed, a brief blaze of feeling so convoluted and powerful that it almost took her breath away in the split instant before the blankness slammed back down like wall. And she understood.

The emotion wasn't gone at all. He had simply tucked it behind a shield as solid as the one he wore to hide his face, safe, guarded. He was protecting himself, and she had nothing but empathy for it. After all, she would have been wounded too if he had showed her such intense physical and emotional affection only to go and leave as if it hadn't mattered.

But it _had_ mattered.

"You think I'm not going to come back." It wasn't a question. She already knew the answer. "But I am."

The shield held, but it was cracking. She saw it in the sudden increase in the tension along his neck, as though he were clenching his jaw. There was anger now, too. A hot lash of it.

 _Don't tell me that_. _Don't tell me things you don't mean._

 _Don't give me hope._

"I have to go for a little while," she said softly, holding his eyes while she spoke. Prolonged eye contact was difficult. There was a reason eyes were called windows to the soul; eye contact could be as intimate as touch, even more so sometimes. Such as now. But that was what she wanted. "There are some things I have to do, and I need to convince Clay not to come back. Then I'll come back."

The anger faded, but it was clear he was not convinced. And he probably never would be. He must believe to some degree that she still thought she must pretend her way to the freedom he didn't realize she no longer wanted. She could talk all she wanted. She could talk until she talked herself as mute as he was, but it wouldn't be enough. She had to show him. She understood and respected that. The only thing she regretted was that it left her no way to completely spare him pain until she could.

Mustering her nerve she stepped forward, inserting herself into his space.

"Do you trust me?"

He faltered, the stony façade weakening to the point that she could see the incredible vulnerability beneath. He wanted to, desperately…but he couldn't quite do it. Not completely.

Shifting the bag to one hand, she lifted the other, reaching to trace the tip of her finger along the faded red slash mark beneath the eye of the mask. He couldn't feel it, she knew that, but she had a feeling he knew what she was doing anyway. She flattened her hand, over the cool surface of the hard plastic, studying the unreadable tumult in his eyes.

"I'm coming back, Jason. I promise."

He gave a tiny dip of his chin. It wasn't a nod, not acceptance, not belief; it was acknowledgement, no more. It stung a bit, but she understood.

He stayed as she went about getting ready to go, watching as she brought Clay's bag out to the porch to sit beside her own, waiting as she consumed half a bowl of soup for some quick energy. He watched as she tied her hair up into a sloppy bun and picked up the bags, slinging one over each shoulder. He waited until her feet reached the edge of the steps, and then he moved, a gigantic, silent shadow, to block her path.

He stood close, so close that once it would have had her shrinking away, intimidated. She blinked at him, mouth open to ask, when – not so suddenly as to be entirely abrupt – he tipped his head down, angling until the slight rise where the mask protected his nose met her brow, just above her hairline. It was a gentle touch, and lasted no more than two, maybe three seconds at most. Then he was straightening, moving to the side to let her pass, and he didn't need to speak for her to know that it had been a goodbye.

There were tears gathering hot at the corners of her eyes as she stepped down onto the grass. Everything in her wanted to toss the bags to the ground and launch herself at him, but she couldn't have even if she'd had the composure. By the time she looked up, he had gone. Vanished, ghost-like, into the trees.

She shrugged off another little sting of hurt. What, had she expected him to walk her to the road? Prolong his own pain? Why, when she knew the way on her own. All she had to do was follow the camp driveway and take a right. It was just that she had wanted to prolong her time with him as much as possible, selfish as that was. But she would be back. She had promised, and this was a promise she would keep if it killed her.

Slinging Clay's heavy pack more securely over her left shoulder, she set off. It would be awkward going, but she'd manage. It wasn't that far.

Ok, it was farther than she'd remembered. Either that or two miles was a hell of lot longer than it had seemed before.

The walk wasn't arduous, but it wasn't pleasant. It was awkward going, between the uneven weight of the two bags which forced her to routinely switch them from one shoulder to another to keep her back from seizing up. Then there was the fact that her feet were still a little sore from the other day. The one thing in her favor was that it wasn't hot. Though the morning had been a sunny one, the sun had succumbed to the kind of dull overcast particular to summer. It had actually gotten to the point where she'd had to extract and slip on the hoodie from her bag.

It was strange, she felt as though she was trying to walk away and hold on at the same time, though not to anything in particular. It was an odd, uncomfortable feeling that she very much wanted to shake, but didn't quite know how.

The town of Crystal Lake was located roughly four and a half miles down the road from the camp end of the lake. It was the kind of tiny, sleepy town that managed, somewhat miraculously, to eke by on the graces of summer tourism. The only reason it continued to survive was due to novelty and because there happened to be vacation cabins up in the hills nearby. People found it an interesting spot to visit for its somewhat spooky reputation even though local law enforcement forbade trespass onto the lake on grounds of it not being safe from all the mining activity of decades past. Although distance was definitely a contributing factor, the biggest reason she was grateful she didn't have to go all the way to town was because of the inevitable small town curiosity and questions that she was simply not prepared to handle.

 _Hi there! Oh, not much, just spent the last six weeks up by the lake – it's so pretty up there this time of year. What? Oh, yeah. I mean, half the time I was locked up underground at the mercy of a serial killer who didn't actually hurt me and who actually turned out to be super sweet and stupid sexy. Crazy vacations, am I right?_

Aaaand hello, loony bin.

The gas station where she had directed Clay was one of those final way stations before a long, unbroken stretch of road. The kind that primarily served people just passing through, truckers, campers, travelers, and the like, and maybe the odd local now and again. Due to this, it probably spent much of its time empty.

That was what she'd thought it was at first, as she rounded the final bend and saw the old, rickety building standing seemingly on raw tenacity alone. That was until she drew nearer and saw the truck parked by the ice out front, hidden behind the pumps.

She craned her head as she walked, searching for her brother. The creak and slam of a car door drew her attention, and then there he was, jumping from the cab of the truck and running at a dead sprint toward her.

" _Whitney!"_

Emotion surged like bile in her throat, hot and sour-sweet and thick. She staggered forward, her stomach pitching just under her ribs like she was seasick, and for a moment she thought she was going to start sobbing. Her body listed forward as she reached for him with both hands. Then he was there, his arms around her, if a bit awkward with the extra bulk of the bags, and gripping so tightly she was rendered both breathless and near to bursting all at once.

For all the good, for all that her ordeal had become less of one, she had not emerged from it entirely unscathed, and for the space of a few seconds she was a little girl again who just wanted her big brother to tell her it was going to be ok. And it would be. She was fine and he was here, safe, out of danger. Any real relief in their last reunion had been choked out by a threat that no longer existed – so long as he stayed well away from the lake – and she could allow herself to sink into it now, bury her head in his shoulder and breathe the paint-and-motor oil smell of his clothes, and be at ease.

"Oh my god, Whitney…" Her brother was not so at ease. His voice retained the same tense, urgent pitch of fear and adrenaline from the other night as he kept stammering. "I didn't think—I thought… _god,_ are you ok?"

He pulled back to look at her, cupping her face between his hands and looking her over as if he expected to find her haggard and stressed, or wounded. His hands were cold against her cheeks – cold with stress. A trait that ran in the family, unfortunately.

"I'm ok," she reassured him, gripping him lightly by the sleeves.

He didn't seem to hear. He was still looking her over, a strained, almost feverish look in his eyes.

"I knew something was wrong when you didn't show up. Everyone said you were probably fine, that you'd just run off with Mike, but _I_ _knew._ I just didn't think—"

"When I didn't show up where?" she interrupted gently, hoping to soothe the fit of words he was stumbling through with the rolling, uncontrolled force of a seizure. She might have been annoyed with him, after all _she_ was the one who'd spent days locked up in a tunnel for christ's sake, but she didn't really have it in her to be mad. He was worried, and to his perspective he'd had good reason to be.

"The…"

Clay's verbal stream of thought ground to a halt as he focused on the question she'd asked. The ardent urgency in his face eased, but the furrow between his brows only deepened; and suddenly something about the way he was looking at her, the way he continued to look at her as his hands fell from her face to her upper arms as if to steady her, made her entire being ice over.

All of a sudden she had the very real compulsion to run.

"To the—"

He paused, jaw working as though he were having difficulty forming it around what he was trying to say. Then, he inhaled sharply.

"Mom's gone," he blurted, so fast that she didn't realize what he'd actually said until he was halfway through his next statement. "I got a call about the funeral and so I went, but you weren't there and no one knew where you were…"

She'd stopped listening.

Gone.

Mom was…gone.

A part of her had known, she thought. It had been a fool's hope to imagine a prospected three weeks at most would last a full three more beyond. This was really only confirming something she had, in a sense, already accepted as a likely probability, and yet the world still pitched around her as she reeled as if from an uppercut to the chin.

"How d—did…"

"In her sleep. Fatima said she went in one morning and she was…"

" _I'll still be here when you get back."_

That was what Ellen had said to her, to encourage her stubborn daughter to go on a weekend trip, a break from the sickroom and the gathering clouds of slow, impending death.

" _My little worrier."_

But she wasn't going to be there when Whitney got back. She wouldn't be there, in her bed, always tired, always hurting, always with a soft smile lighting the eyes she had given both her children, wan and paper-thin at her mouth – but always with that hint of spark.

That smile was gone now. And Whitney hadn't been there.

She expected the sharp, shredding wretchedness of guilt, to feel the drag of growing sobs in her diaphragm. She expected the wrathful misery of loss. But it didn't come. Because somehow she had known, and she had known that while it wasn't what she would have chosen, it was ok.

" _That's how life works, Whitsie-bat. We don't always get to choose."_

Mom was all right now. There was no more pain, no more living a shell of a life absent the things she truly enjoyed, no more seeing her children strained and sad and fighting. Having her daughter there to be weepy and fuss would not have made Ellen any happier, or die any easier. The only regret she could truly allow herself was for the worry she might have caused by not coming home when promised, and now that Ellen was no longer alive to worry, she hoped that worry was as free from her as the pain.

"Come on," Clay urged. His grip slid to one of her elbows, coaxing her forward with a gentle pressure. "Let's go."

Her legs moved automatically, allowing him to guide her the rest of the way down the road. She lifted a hand to her face, rubbing almost absently at her eyes. It would hit her harder later, she knew, after it really sank in and began to feel real. But while she was a little teary, mostly she was just tired and sad, and relieved.

The sudden burst of total clarity was somewhat unexpected, though.

They had reached the truck, Clay was just opening the cab door to usher her in, when she stepped back, pulling her elbow from his grasp.

Clay paused, surprised, and turned to look at her. "What's wrong?"

He frowned, worry drawing hard lines at the corners of his mouth. He was eyeing her again, and not just her face this time. And the look on his face…

"Are you—did he…"

She knew full well he wouldn't understand the repulsion that had just overtaken her, that had driven her to reel back from him as though he'd backhanded her across the face. She knew what he was implying, what he was asking without putting it to voice.

 _Did he hurt you?_

He couldn't possibly understand just how awful – how _wrong_ – it was to associate such a thing with the sweet, gentle man that had touched his face to her hair to bid her goodbye, fully expecting never to see her again.

"I'm _fine,_ Clay," she snapped.

His far too earnest eyes widened, startled by the sharpness of it, the biting edge to her tone. She was almost surprised by it herself. Almost.

"Hey," he murmured, his voice lowering, softening with the intent to soothe. His arm went back around her, slipping beneath the coarse cloth of her backpack and pulling her into his chest. "It's ok. You're safe now."

She twisted free, stifling the urge to punch him straight in the solar plexus.

"I was safe before," she corrected bitterly.

"The hell you were," Clay's brows lowered, his own frustration rising to match hers. "I have been out looking for you for over a month—people here were telling me not to even expect to find your _body_. I've heard the stories, you're lucky to be alive."

"You don't kn—"

"Why didn't you let me get you _out of there?"_ he demanded, volume rising to a soft shout.

" _Because he would have killed you."_

Clay rocked back slightly on his heels, not expecting quite the level of venom she'd just hurled at him.

"The only reason you are still alive right now is because I stayed. If I hadn't, he would have run us down and probably torn your fucking spine out. You're lucky he didn't do it anyway."

Clay bristled, but she could tell he was very aware that she was right. He had been hopelessly, ridiculously outmatched. "I could have—"

"No," she said flatly. "You couldn't. And you didn't need to."

His expression twisted, dark with disbelief, anger, confusion. "Why are you arguing with—fine, just…never mind that now," he huffed, trying to tamp down his frustration. "You're safe now. Let's get you home."

Home.

Home, where her brother had left, where her mother had been sick and died. Home, where her life had boiled itself down to a mindless trudge of work and school and caring for someone no longer fully there with her. A home that hadn't felt like home for years. She didn't want to go back there, to that place synonymous now almost solely with sad things. If she went back, all she would do was suffocate in her own misery. She didn't want that. Mom wouldn't have wanted that.

She wasn't going back.

As soon as the decision formed she felt as if something as immense as an entire brick wall had been lifted from her chest, as though the barbed wire wrapped thrice around her heart had been peeled away.

"I couldn't find the keys for your bike," she said mildly, succinct and clear, sliding the strap of his knapsack from her shoulder and holding it out to him. "But you probably have a spare. It's still at that house so you can pick it up whenever, just stay off the lake property."

Clay reached for the bag out of reflex, his fingers closing around the top loop while his mouth dropped open, utterly thrown by her sudden switch in subject.

"I…what?"

Turning on her heel, Whitney slung her own bag more firmly over her other shoulder and strode straight into the convenience store.

A tinny recording of a chime – if something so wizened and unsettling could be called a chime – sounded overhead as the door swung shut behind her with a mournful, drawn-out creak worthy of only the best campfire ghost stories. Glancing around, she grabbed a basket and headed down the closest aisle, determined to comb the rickety but immaculately clean little store as thoroughly as she could for supplies. She'd get food, too, but first she wanted something very specific.

Weaving her way through the aisles she scanned the shelves until she found what she was looking for.

Pads.

God _bless_ this gas station.

She heard the creepy door chime again, followed by Clay hissing her name. Which she ignored.

" _Whitney!_ " Right behind her now, and close to irate. "What are you doing?"

She turned her head back to the shelves. "I'm not going home, Clay," she told him calmly, adjusting the handles of the basket to sit in the fold of her elbow so she could reach for a box of pads and toss it in.

"What do you mean you're not going home? What are you talking about?"

Sighing, she turned her head to meet his eyes. "Look, Clay, I love you," she told him patiently, "thank you for coming to find me, and for trying to look after me." Impulsively, she hugged him, folding her free arm around his waist and squeezing. "I appreciate it, I do. But I'm not going home."

Stepping back, she offered a smile and turned back to the shelves.

"I'll be ok, I promise."

Maybe it was a little on the dismissive side. Maybe she was being a bit of an asshole about it. But as much as she might love him, as grateful as she was to know that he clearly loved her enough to have dropped everything to come looking for her, they were never going to be what they had once been. Too much had happened, and not enough had changed. She was whole and healthy and in full possession of all her faculties. That was going to have to be enough.

"You're not making any sense," Clay persisted, following her down the aisle and pausing behind her as she reached for a package of baby wipes. "What are you planning to do? Where are you going to stay? What about—?"

She kept walking, tuning out the flurry of questions he flung at her while she perused the second half of the aisle for anything useful, pausing as she came to the tiny section at the very end housing medicated creams, lubricant, and condoms.

Chewing at the inside of her lip she considered the small selection of packages. Was she a horrible person for thinking about this right now? Somehow she thought her mom would probably be thrilled that she was so actively engaged and enthusiastic about anything, even – maybe especially – a guy. Which just left her standing there flexing her hand, recollecting what Jason had felt like under her palm and trying to gauge size. It was hard to know for sure, the pants had been a hindrance, though they'd worked well enough in her favor in the moment.

She reached, deciding as she did to play it safe and get a pack each of average and large.

"Whoa— _whoa_."

Clay's hand closed around her arm, tight under the elbow, and yanked her bodily back a step until she was facing him. He was staring at the sleek black packaging clutched in her other hand, the mix of bewilderment and dawning horror on his face almost comical. Or it might have been had she not been on a fast track to annoyance, and had she not known he was five seconds away from being a self-righteous ass.

"What the fuck is this?"

Three seconds: a new record.

"Let go of my arm," she ordered calmly.

"What _the fuck—_ "

"Let go of my arm, Clay."

"You ok, there, miss?"

The new voice came from somewhere behind her. Clay's eyes jumped to a point over her head and she twisted to see the man standing at the other end of the aisle, an open cardboard box balanced in one arm and eyeing Clay with an air that was openly disapproving and more than a little hostile. He was an older man, approaching his sixties, with closely cropped silver-white hair mostly hidden under a faded ballcap. The badge pinned to his dusty blue coveralls read _Steve,_ and underneath that _Manager._

Adjusting his grip on the box, the man addressed her again, voice gruff and with an underlying slant that sounded vaguely New Yorkish to her ear. "He givin' you trouble?"

Clay's grip eased, his hand slipping almost cautiously from her arm, moving the way one might have to keep from provoking an aggressive dog. Which was probably wise. Though the man's face was careworn and his hair long past merely gray, he was stocky and wide-shouldered, reminding her almost of a pit bull in stature.

She almost laughed. He thought Clay was her piece of shit boyfriend. There was such irony there it was almost priceless.

She didn't laugh. The man might be fit enough to take her brother, but he still hadn't needed to interfere and had done so anyway. She smiled instead, though she didn't pretend to be any less annoyed or tired than she felt. Hiding it would only make it seem like she was trying to cover for said piece of shit boyfriend, which was exactly not what was happening here.

Oh, god, the _irony._

"I'm fine. My brother and I just haven't seen each other in a while and we're…finishing a fight."

That wasn't entirely true, but when she considered how long it had been since they'd talked before her untimely quasi-kidnapping and how pissed at him she had been, it certainly wasn't a lie, either.

"Thank you," she added graciously

"Hmph," the man grumbled slightly under his breath. "Well, holler if you need."

After shooting one last warning glare at Clay, he went back to whatever he'd been doing, an opening Whitney graciously took to drop the packs of condoms she'd been holding into her basket. Which instantly shook Clay out of his wary stupor.

The horror was back, this time laced with an anger that twisted his features into something almost masklike. She'd never seen him so livid before, not even when they'd fought at their absolute worst.

"Is that…that _bastard,"_ he spat the word as though it were poison on his tongue, "forcing you to—I'll _kill him_. I'll—"

"Shut up!" she barked, then hastily lowered her voice. "No one's forcing me to do anything."

Jesus, she really did not want to have this conversation.

"When I asked you before if he—if he'd hurt you I thought you got mad because you didn't want to talk about it, but…" Clay was staring at her with a realization still only in its infancy, but growing fast. "Are you…?"

Something in her face answered the question he hadn't been able to ask: too morally offended by the idea to verbalize it, as if to do so would destroy the off-chance that it wasn't true.

"God, _Whitney,_ " he breathed, his face going white as a clean sheet and wan with disgust, as though the idea of his sister with the hulking, vicious brute he remembered made him nauseous, and that she had done so voluntarily just made it worse, and she wanted to _slap_ him. As if he could judge her any more harshly than she had judged herself in weeks past. As if she hadn't already chastised and punished and raged at herself to the point of making herself sick.

"We are _not_ about to pretend you have any right to dictate who I do or do not sleep with."

Her hands were shaking; fury slick and cold like sweat down her back, thick and stifling in her throat. The metal handles of the basket were digging into the flesh inside the bend of her elbow, for no other reason than that she was clenching all her joints together.

"I found you chained to a _wall_ under his _house_ ," Clay said sharply, emphasizing each word as though in order to remind her. As if she could have forgotten at some point in the last three days where he had found her and why she had been there. "He's—"

"I know what he is," she hissed between her teeth.

"He's a goddamn monster!"

" _Stop it!"_ It left her as a yell, high and echoing in the empty store. She didn't really even care if she was overheard, but dropped her voice back to a soft hiss. The subject of their conversation wasn't exactly one she wanted overheard. "Just—stop it. You aren't the one who gets to be pissed about this!"

His mouth dropped open, temper hot on his tongue, and she stomped on it.

"You aren't the one who spent six days thinking the next minute was going to be the one when you died. You aren't the one who tore your own skin open trying to get free or considered starving yourself because you thought that maybe it would be better just to die already and get it over with."

Her face was hot, her vision gone blurry at the edges. She could tell she wasn't going to cry; though there was tightness in her chest it wasn't the shuddery, unstable kind that preluded tears. No, she was just royally fucking pissed.

Clay's face had gone, if possible, even whiter. He looked like he actually might vomit, which just agitated her further.

"You don't get to come in here and lecture me like I haven't seen people stabbed and cut open and die in front of me. I know what he's done, and I know what he is. And he is _not_ a monster."

There was a sharp stinging in her eyes and she turned her head quickly.

She was not going to cry right now, god damn it. She'd bite her own tongue off first.

"God, Whitney, I…" Clay faltered, clearly floundering for something to say. "I didn't mean for it to sound like—" He wisely chose _not_ to outline what he'd made it sound like. "I'm sorry. I just…I don't understand. You just said you'd thought about starving yourself, and now you're defending him for putting you through that? Do you know how you sound right now?"

Her laugh was utterly empty of humor. "Batshit insane," she said frankly, "trust me, I know."

"You sound like one of those girls that think they can fix a guy who smacks them around and throws plates at their head."

"Oh _jesus christ_ , Clay," she cried, temper flaring. "I know we're basically estranged, but I thought you'd know me a little better than that."

Turning abruptly on her heel she set off for the next aisle, snatching several packages of trail mix and throwing them into her basket as she did.

"Ok, ok," Clay followed, hands spread in a placating gesture. "I'm sorry, but come on. What the fuck else am I supposed to think? He chained you _to a wall._ "

"All right, first of all," pivoting sharply she held up a quelling finger, "stop throwing that around like it makes a point. It doesn't mean what you think it means. Second of all, he never put a hand on me unless he had to, and most of the time it was because I was picking a fight."

"You can't—"

"And," she continued, talking over his protest, "he never— _ever_ —hurt me."

At its most literal and technical, that wasn't true. Even now she was hyper aware of the hem of her shirt where it covered the bruising at her side. Still, for all she might sound like one of those girls making excuses for a piece of human garbage, pretending she could change him, she wasn't one, and it wasn't because she didn't want to face reality.

Jason had hurt her neither willingly or knowingly even once. The harm he'd done out of ignorance he had learned from and never repeated, the rest was simply a result of being so much stronger than she was, and she could not in good conscience blame him for gripping a little too hard in the throes of the first orgasm he'd ever experienced. Especially not when she'd kind of liked it. Not the bruising, but the being the one to overwhelm him to the point that he forgot how to control himself.

Jason was neither thoughtless nor abusive, and she would not tolerate the insult he had done nothing to deserve. Call him what he was – a murderer – and she wouldn't refute it, because that was the truth. But it was the only condemnation he'd earned.

Clay sighed, looking tired, as though his adrenaline had finally worn off. "Whits," he began softly, the childhood nickname delicate and frail as a flake of snow. "Just because he hasn't yet…you can't be sure he won't."

She smiled in spite of herself. "It's the only thing in the world I _can_ be sure of."

His eyebrows rose, hapless and so wearily bewildered that once again she found herself on the verge of laughter.

How did she explain this? It wasn't exactly a simple story, and the moral gray area was so thick it was downright murky – like the water at the bottom of a lake. How did she explain that while yes, he had killed people, he found no joy in it, no satisfaction; that when he killed he did so as efficiently as possible, that he would not have killed at all if people would simply heed the warnings and stay away. How did she explain that while none of these things excused the taking of a life, they did matter?

"If he was ever going to hurt me, he would have killed me in the beginning and been done with it. But he didn't, and once he didn't it's like he knew he had an obligation to treat me a certain way. He fed me, took care of me. I'm not sure he wouldn't have just let me go if he thought he could. And after," she took a breath to brace against a sudden rush of emotion, "after you left, three days ago…I chose to stay, and he knew he couldn't chain me again, even if he'd wanted to. And I didn't stay just because I didn't want to see you with your brains smashed on the floor."

All right, maybe that hadn't been the best way to word things.

"Then…" There was something almost desperate in Clay's tone. "Why?"

 _Why._

How did she even _begin_ to answer that question?

"You only know what you've seen—maybe what you've heard from rumors. You've only seen him angry and afraid. You haven't seen him sitting under a tree just to watch birds or breaking up crackers to leave for the squirrels. You haven't seen him go out of his way to bring me books or make sure I have things I need, you didn't see…"

A tremor had entered her voice, but she didn't fight it any more than to pause for a steadying breath.

"You didn't see the way he looked at me when he left you on the floor and came to make sure I was ok. He would have done anything I asked him to. That was why he let you go. He thought you were trying to take me away—which you were. He thought he was protecting me. From you."

"So he's, what…in love with you?"

 _Yes._

"I don't know."

Clay turned, angling his body slightly away from her as he raked a hand through his hair, leaving it tousled and mussed as though he'd just woken from a troubled sleep. He was shaking his head faintly, a subconscious reflex he was clearly not in control over.

"I can get feeling sorry for him," he began slowly, "you've always been compassionate. You're a good person, you can't help it."

She had never really seen herself in that light, but she was pretty sure in this context it wasn't really a compliment.

"But I can't—I can't understand how…" He paused, obviously struggling to find the words he wanted. "I never thought I would hear you defend a murderer. You've always been so—not black and white, but _sure_ about right and wrong as you see it, and murder seems like it would be pretty up there in the wrong category. How is that just…not a problem?"

"Do you blame a dog for biting, or do you blame the people that kicked it over and over again and taught it to?" She posed it as a question, but it was the kind of question that didn't really seek an answer.

Frustration hardened Clay's frown. "He's not a Rottweiler."

"A kid then," she amended with a dismissive jerk of her chin. "Do you blame them for being violent, or do you blame the people that taught them it's better to hit first?"

"This isn't the same thing."

"It's exactly the same thing," she argued, vaguely aware of the store manager passing some distance to their right, keeping a watchful eye on them. "He was a little boy who'd been bullied his entire life, told he was a freak and that he was ugly, a _monster."_

It was gratifying to see Clay fidget at his own word thrown back at him. Bitterly so, but gratifying nonetheless.

"Then he's pushed into the lake, almost drowns, sees his mom go crazy and kill people, then sees _her_ die in an awful, brutal way. He was left alone and traumatized with no one to take care of him. He thought he was doing what she wanted and there was no one to teach him any different. He didn't know what else to do. What would _you_ have done?"

"I wouldn't have _killed_ people," Clay grumbled.

"Easy for you to say!"

For a moment they just stood there in terse silence, the rift between them stretching wider than it had ever been. She didn't like it. Not just the rift itself, but feeling mad and strained. She was tired of burning through stress like a marathon runner burned energy, and she was tired of fighting. Even with him. Especially with him.

"I'm sorry about Jenna," she offered. Clay's jaw worked, possibly to hide the slight waver of his chin. "I didn't know her, but she tried to help me. She didn't deserve to die that way."

He didn't say anything, just stood staring down at the shelf in front of him with an intensity that might have set the rows of donuts and snack cakes on fire if left there long enough.

"I can stop it."

She didn't quite know what made her say it. She didn't know, not for sure – it was a guess and nothing more. But her hope kept it from tasting like a lie.

Clay shot her a glance too dark to mirror his question. "Stop what?"

"The killing," she murmured. "If I stay, there's a chance I can keep anyone else from dying."

She expected him to reject this immediately, to insist that was a job for the police (or a firing squad). But when the protest didn't burst immediately and vehemently from him she realized that he had been oddly quiet about that in particular, not even since she had gotten there today but before. Which made her wonder if he'd had some less than stellar encounters with local law enforcement during his search for her – encounters that might have compounded with what he had witnessed for himself. He probably understood a little better now why the threat of the cops hadn't really been much of a threat at all.

Not that it much mattered whether he rejected this or not, or even if what she said was even true or not. She was staying either way.

Instead, her brother just regarded her with a weary incredulity. "How could you possibly know that?"

"Because I stopped him from killing you."

The silence which followed this calm statement was heavy, charged like the air right before a thunderstorm.

He'd heard her. She could tell by the way his jaw set, the shallow cleft in his chin – inherited from the father she'd never met, or so she supposed – ever so slightly deeper than usual. He was thinking, turning her words over in his mind like he would have a wrench if he'd had one.

"He's just a man, Clay," she said softly. "He might have PTSD and a bit of a blind spot for what we consider social normalcy, but he's not a psychopath. He doesn't torture and kill because he likes it. All he wants is for people to leave him alone."

The smile found her, though she hadn't expected it, a little achy at the corners of her mouth and where it echoed in her voice.

"He's sweet and he's gentle. He likes to watch small animals, and listening to me read. He thinks my hair is pretty. I ran into a cougar this one day—he literally put himself between it and me to keep me from getting mauled." Clay glanced at her again, and she felt her smile turn a little wry. "I can't think of someone like that as a monster."

At first Clay did little more than absorb that, head tipped down as he paced down the aisle away from her for a few steps, then back, passing a hand over his face.

He wasn't comfortable, that much was plain – not with any of it. He didn't agree with the choice she was making and didn't like what it would mean, but she had a feeling it was more to do with the pressure he felt to take care of his sister, and guilt over having not done as good a job of doing so as he felt he should have, than it was the ambiguous nature of the moral questions at play.

Oh, she didn't doubt that he genuinely thought murder and kidnapping and holding someone captive were all inexcusably wrong and couldn't understand why she wasn't conceding to that reality he had thought they shared – that they _did_ share. She didn't disagree with him. It was just that…well, things weren't that simple. In fact, for all that she might have thought otherwise not all that long ago, she wasn't sure anything was truly that simple outside of the odd rare occasion. Whether she had managed to convince him of that with the examples she'd given, to say nothing of the background, she couldn't say.

Finally he turned back to her, the horror and doubt and frustration he'd worn like a winter coat gone to leave a beseeching plea.

"I can't just leave you here," he told her quietly. The rest went unspoken, but she heard it nonetheless.

 _Out in the middle of nowhere. With him._

"Yes, you can," she said, at once firm and gentle. As Mom had told her once: you needed neither volume nor force to be understood and obeyed, you just had to hold your ground until the other will broke against you like water around rock. "And you're going to have to find a way to be ok with it."

He hadn't opened his mouth to, but he looked like he wanted to argue. She sighed and looked away, her eyes automatically seeming to find the front windows and locking there, watching the quiet road, the empty parking spaces and unattended gas pumps.

"Mom's gone. You're out living your life—or, you will be. I drove my friends away because I couldn't maintain more than a few relationships, Mike is…gone now. All I had was school and work, neither of which I can just pick up where I left off. I wanted—" She broke off as what she had been about to say struck her, truly struck her. "I wanted to help people. It's why I was getting my nursing degree. But I'm not sure how much of that came from actually wanting it and how much came from seeing Mom and needing to feel like I could fix it."

It was not an entirely comfortable revelation to have, definitely not in front of someone else. She would have to process it in a bit more depth before she tried to do anything with it, but now wasn't the time.

"I didn't have anything else," she admitted. "But now…I feel like I'm somewhere I can actually do something good, something important. I can help someone. Truly help. Maybe not like I'd thought, but maybe better."

When she looked back at her brother he was shaking his head again in that absent, unknowing way. "But why you, Whits?" he implored her, "why does it have to be you?"

She laughed then, a little dry, perhaps, but the amusement was real.

Why her, indeed? How many times had she asked herself that same question in the past six and a half weeks? How many times had she wondered why? Why she was still alive? Why any of this had happened? Why two people so perfectly positioned to loathe one another had ended up so fond of each other? She had no answers for any of those questions. But for this one, she did.

"Why _not_ me?"

Clay's laugh was a bit more on the bitter side, accompanied by tipping his head back to look up as if pleading with the sky for assistance – or sanity. It was a familiar gesture, a set of mannerisms she had seen many times before when she had won an argument, or he had simply given in with begrudging surrender. _Of course,_ it might have said, dripping with sarcasm hot enough to scald.

Regardless of whether he believed the things she'd told him, he wasn't arguing with her anymore. Much of the fight had left his eyes and the set of his mouth, yet the frown was still there, a cloud of doubt dark between his brows. He really was thinner than when she'd seen him last, over a year ago now; even here in a well-lit store there were shadows cutting below his cheekbones. He truly _had_ been worried about her.

The rush of affection she felt for him was limned with sadness, but it was warm and steady. Whatever else had happened between them, he was still her brother. The same brother that had picked up when she called to cry about homework and difficult classes and drama, about boys, about everything. She had learned too late that he was no more perfect than she was, and possibly far less capable of dealing with mental or emotional strain, and that neither of those things were his fault. He was human, just as she was: trying to do the best he could with what he had, sometimes succeeding, and sometimes failing.

Closing the several feet of space between them, she reached up and took his nose lightly between her index and middle fingers – the way he'd always done to her when she was little. It had almost always preceded a tussle, either wrestling or tickling or an unholy collision of both.

Pinching gently, she told him: "you're my brother and I love you. I'll always love you. I don't expect you not to worry, but I do expect you to trust me."

She released his nose, but before she could lower her hand to the edge of the basket Clay caught it in his own. For a moment he just stood there, her hand in his, as he studied her face so thoroughly she felt like she was being memorized down to every excruciating detail.

"You're not going to change my mind," she cautioned him, and was caught off-guard by his smile. Small, and more than a little bit crooked, but a smile.

"Not my stubborn little sister," he said fondly.

A moment later and his smile faded and he was looking at her now with a resignation she hadn't really expected to see.

"You like him, then."

It wasn't a question. She had no idea why hearing it made her want to cry, or why it felt like such a relief to say it to someone other than herself, even someone who might judge her for it.

"Yeah," she whispered, "yeah, I do."

Nodding once, Clay gave a heavy exhale, squeezing her hand between his. "Ok, then." Tugging faintly at her hand, he jerked his head toward the door. "Come on, leave that here for a minute."

Though her eyebrows rose in question, she followed, leaving her basket on the floor just inside the door before stepping back outside. He led her to the truck, letting go of her hand in order to reach into the bed. He rifled around for a moment: she heard the metal slide of a zipper, the rustle of fabric.

"I brought you some things. Thought you might need some clothes," he said, and as she leaned up on her toes she saw him removing things from one duffle bag into another. "There's cash in here, if you need it, and a phone. There's a number in it that you can use to get a hold of me any time."

With another slide of zipper he lifted the second duffle out from the truck bed and held it out to her. She blinked at him.

"I…"

She wasn't sure what she had been about to say – that she couldn't take money from him, or maybe that he didn't need to give it to her. But something in his face made her pause before she could. She was reminded of his leaving, back when Mom's diagnosis had come through and the shock had landed with the buckling snap of a bad fall. How she had seen his going as running away from his own life, and how similar it felt, in a way, to what she was doing now.

"I guess we're not so different after all," she mused.

He laughed quietly, and maybe a little sadly. "I guess not."

She reached, her fingers closing around the duffle's padded strap, and took it from him. "Thanks, Clay."

"I'm sorry," he began, and when she looked up at his face it was to find his brow furrowed and his eyes over-bright. "For not being there. I wasn't what you needed. What Mom needed. I'm sorry."

For the second time she reached for him, slipping her free arm around his back and pulling him into her. She felt him fold around her, felt the low tremor in his chest that said he was trying not to cry.

"I know," she assured him, rubbing soothingly at the space between his shoulder blades. Because she did know. She wouldn't say it was ok, because it hadn't been. Nor would she say she forgave him. She would, someday, when the hurt wasn't quite as fresh. But for now, it was enough that he had said it, enough that she had heard it, and it was enough for him to know she understood that he meant it.

She felt him rest his chin against her head, the way he always had with every greeting and every goodbye since they'd stopped sharing a roof, and drag in a breath that trembled slightly.

"I'll be staying at the house for a while, until everything's all sorted out legally. I'll take care of all that, since you did everything else. You can come get your things and anything else you want whenever you can. Or I can pick you up…or you can just let me know what you want and I'll bring it."

She was glad he hadn't asked if she wanted to keep the house. The only house she would have wanted was their grandparents', which had been sold years ago when they'd died. Maybe someday the new owners would move and she could think about it then, but for now, she didn't want to think about houses or legalities or paperwork.

"You going to sell?" she asked, drawing back to look at him. A piece of his hair had flopped over his forehead, both too long and too short at the same time. Unthinking, she lifted a hand and smoothed it back.

Clay shrugged, looking like he needed to sleep for a week. Which, he probably did. "I don't know," he admitted, "part of me doesn't want to. I missed so much—"

"Don't do that," she chided sternly, "don't use living there to punish yourself. Mom wouldn't want that, and I sure as hell don't want it."

"No, I know. I won't."

She wasn't entirely sure she believed him, but that was a battle for another day. "Good, because I'll beat your ass raw if you do." He snorted, but didn't argue with her. Proof that he might be pigheaded sometimes, but he was still smart. "Do you need anything from me for the will?"

As the oldest, Clay was the executor, but she would never claim to be knowledgeable in any kind of law.

He shook his head. "I don't think so. But I'll let you know if I do."

"Ok."

There was a moment of empty quiet, not quite awkward, but near to it. Glancing to the store windows, Clay asked her, "do you need help carrying or…getting back?"

She stared at him, impressed. As stubborn and unmoving as he had been about it, he was already trying.

"No," she assured him. "I've got it. Go back to wherever you've been staying and get some sleep. And maybe eat something? You look like you need it."

He rolled his eyes at her fussing, but agreed. "If you need _anything,_ " he told her, hand on the door of the truck, "call."

"I will."

He studied her then, eyes soft on her face. "I love you, Whits."

"I love you too, jerk."

If his laughter trembled slightly, she pretended not to notice.

With a promise to talk soon, Clay started the truck with a reluctant clunk and roar of an old engine. When he waved as he backed out of the spot, she waved back, and when he pulled out onto the road and set off, she watched until she couldn't see him anymore.

* * *

 **NOTES:**

Holy dialogue, Batman.

As much as it sucks – which it does, royally – this quarantine business is doing WONDERS for my productivity, as evidenced here.

Dialogue is usually not as difficult for me as this was. Actually, correction: it's not the actual dialogue that's hard, it's what comes between the dialogue. For someone who writes like I do, very descriptive and flowery, it's hard to navigate a scene that's pretty much just two people talking at each other without adding in just a bunch of superfluous filler action. I hope I did all right here…I've looked over this stupid chapter so many times already and I just want to fucking post it, but I have a feeling I'm going to look back at it someday and cringe.

-sigh-

Also, is it even logical? I feel like Clay would have fought Whitney harder if he wasn't nursing some serious guilt over being an absentee brother. Maybe not? What do you all think?

I'm pretty sure the clerk/attendant in the movie is probably really the owner and is just being a dick, but in my headcannon all the cameos would have been previous Jason or F13 actors. Trilliumwoods and I have had many a discussion about this exact thing. The farmer should have been Ted White and I will go down with that ship. The lady with the dog should have been Betsy Palmer (if she was still alive), and either Adrienne King or Amy Steel should have been Pamela. I'm basing the shop owner loosely on Steve Dash, who was the first actor to portray grown-up Jason – although technically yes he was only really credited partially, he did pretty much all of the work and went to the hospital for this job, so as far as I'm concerned Warrington Gillette can suck it.

I feel like this chapter just kind of…not fell apart, but got weirder and less interesting as it went on. I know that's because the flow is so different because SO MUCH TALKING. But I'm really on super happy with the first half. Which is fitting for the theme, I suppose. I'm already working on the next one, which I hope will be more satisfying.

The response to the last chapter was so damn positive, and I'm so, so happy and gratified and excited. Get ready for more that, folks, it's gonna get fucking steamy.

For now, a gigantic THANK YOU to you, my readers. Thank you for reading, for your support, and for the sweet, wonderful, life-giving comments. You are all so awesome. I love you to pieces.

Take care of yourselves. Be well, stay sane.

Until next time. 3


	22. Protector

**.**

 **CHAPTER 22  
** Protector

~/13/~

The store manager was seated behind the counter when she came back in, glancing up from the inventory lists he was bent over; first at her, then out the window to the now utterly empty lot. Picking up her basket – right where she'd left it – she sent a smile to the man, and went about the rest of her shopping.

The situation could not be a permanent one. A convenience store didn't sell things like rice and chicken broth or fresh fruit and vegetables outside of the little snack packs she discovered in the fridges along the back wall, things she would want if she was going to be living here now. She would have to find a way to get to town and bring groceries back, and she would have to find a way to either repair the appliances in the lodge or acquire new ones. Or else find a new place to live entirely, which really wasn't something she was sure she could do, if she even wanted to. And all of that would likely require getting a job, which might prove a challenge. At least until she could go to the house and get her car.

She probably should have asked Clay if he could find a way to get it to her. She hadn't been thinking about it. Oh well, she would cross that bridge later.

For now, she gathered enough to supplement her diet of the last month for at least a week until she could plan. She filled her basket with snack packs of fruit and veggies, instant oatmeal and peanut butter, nuts, beef jerky, crackers, and more trail mix. She also snagged a new toothbrush – not the best quality, but it would do – a pack of hair ties, and some new deoderant. Though she considered booze (she could have used a drink or six after the conversation she'd just had), she decided against purely for the sake of weight.

If the manager thought anything about her selections to be odd, or anything about her, for that matter – dressed in fraying jeans and with two bags slung over her shoulders like a runaway teenager – he said nothing about it. Even when handling the condoms he didn't so much as offer a glance, thought she was blushing like a child.

What was she, twelve?

"Thank you again," she blurted, trying to distract herself from her sudden embarrassment, "for earlier."

The man made a noncommittal noise in the back of his throat. "'s no problem. Though I am gonna have to ask again, are you sure you're ok?" He spared a pointed glance at her bags before looking back at her, brown eyes steady and sharp and very clearly aware that while maybe she hadn't been having trouble with a guy, or at least not that particular one, she might be having trouble of some other kind.

"Yes," she reassured him, "I'm fine. There was a—death in the family, and I'm in the middle of moving, so it's just kind of crazy right now."

"Movin' to the area?" he asked, his frown a formidable one that might have cowed her had she not known it was well-meaning.

"Is that weird?"

A stocky shoulder rose in a shrug. "Unusual. Most young people're tryin' to get as close to the city as they can. Not that it's my business, 'cause it isn't."

She answered his shrug with one of her own. "I'm looking for a pretty drastic change."

"Fair enough."

He read her total and she handed over some of the cash Clay had given her. Though she was fairly confident she would have been fine, she wasn't going to say it wasn't handy. It would probably be best if she could avoid using her name for a little while, until she figured things out.

"Right, you're all set," he told her, sliding her change across the counter. "Need any help with these?"

She looked up from where she'd been tucking the paper bags full of groceries into the duffle bag. "No, thanks, I've got it."

"All right, then."

Having stuffed the duffle to its maximum capacity, she gathered the last bag into her arms and headed for the door.

"Thank you again," she called over her shoulder.

"You take care, miss."

The gas station fell away behind her like a guttering old light at the end of a tired road. She'd talked more today than she had in weeks. In terms of conversation, that was. She might have gone longer reading aloud, but that was far different from conversing with other people, especially where heightened levels of emotion were concerned. She felt socially drained and bone-weary, and was not looking forward to the long walk back.

In the last few days she had found herself noting continuously just how much had changed, and the walk back to the lake was no different.

She could remember how oppressive the trees had seemed on the hike in – ancient and towering and almost mean. It had seemed like the forest itself veiled an anger as if on behalf of the brethren lost to the cities from which she, the interloper, had come. It had seemed like the shadows beyond and between them concealed all manner of hazards, and the threat to unleash them. She had put it down to her own stress projected outward at the time. Now, she understood. There had been anger, just not of that kind.

Though they hadn't spent long on the road last time, the same trees surrounded her now, still towering, still ancient. But now they seemed almost a protective force, leaning in around her to form a shield. It felt as if they were welcoming her back.

As silly as that was – as outlandish – it felt weirdly, cosmically right.

Part of her wanted to rail against it, condemning herself as selfish and undeserving for not being wracked with grief and guilt upon the confirmation of her mother's death. Yet she couldn't help feeling as if, somehow, through some weird karmic twist of fate and random chance, in sending Whitney off to _live her life_ instead of waiting by her bedside to die, Ellen had sent her daughter somewhere she would be needed, and where she would be happy. As if she had known all along.

It was impossible, she knew that logically, and not believing in fate or God or anything of that nature would direct her strictly to thinking otherwise. But right there in that moment, surrounded by the trees that had become so familiar and welcoming, it felt right and real.

Adjusting her grip on the paper bag in her arms she tried to think of how far she had to walk still and debating whether or not she should stop and rest. She had already been tired physically, add to that the emotional tumult of her talk with Clay and the awkward weight of the burden she was carrying and she felt like she had just attempted to scale the side of a mountain.

 _Attempted_ being the key word there.

She almost didn't hear the car moving up the road behind her. She might have missed it completely had it not struck her how abrupt and out of place it seemed – the dull rumble of an engine. Especially when she hadn't passed a single car on the walk out.

Before she could turn to look the truck passed her with a heavy thrum from the engine. A big Ford, only a few years old by the look of it, with a pristine blue paint job and not a ding or scratch to be seen. She spared it a glance, not thinking much of it aside from a faint curiosity as to whether it was coming or going. Then the taillights flared red and the vehicle slowed, coming to a stop some yards in front of her.

A thread of unease uncoiled in the back of her mind.

There was probably no reason to worry. It was different out here than it was in the city – people talked to one another casually and comfortably without prior knowledge of each other. It was considered polite. Nothing to be concerned about.

Yet as she drew nearer to the truck she could feel the unease rise and curdle like sour milk.

She caught the faint whirr of the driver's side window lowering just before an arm lifted to settle along the frame of the door and the man inside leaned his head out to speak to her.

"Hey there," he greeted.

He had a long, thin face, with cheekbones sharp enough to cut glass and likely a jaw to match under the dark blond beard. His hair was too long, curling slightly under his ears, his teeth very white when he tossed her a winning smile. In his mid-thirties maybe. Not a bad looking guy, altogether.

"That's a lot of stuff to be lugging around on foot. You need a ride?"

It was a perfectly nice offer, kindly given. He hadn't drawn attention to the fact that she was a girl – like she didn't know – or that she was small and therefore must be weak and helpless. It was just common decency. There was no reason for her hackles to go up, but they were well on their way to being so for reasons she couldn't quite put her finger on.

There were so many reasons not to accept, the largest and most dire being that she couldn't risk accidentally bringing someone onto the grounds. As confident as she might be that she could keep them from meeting an untimely and violent death, she didn't feel much like testing the theory just now. Plus, it wasn't wise to alert someone to the possibility that she might be heading to the lake; not when they might talk about it, and not when that talk might lead to questions and curiosity and all that might follow. And then there was the whole thing about accepting rides from strangers.

Shrugging off the unfounded sense of alarm she offered a smile in return and shook her head. Maybe it was a little on the tight side, but she was tired, damn it – she just wanted to get back, put her shit away, and find Jason.

"No, but thank you anyway."

Rather than drive off, the driver waited until she was in line with the window and lifted his foot from the brake, letting the vehicle roll idly along next to her.

Her heart started to beat a little faster.

"C'mon now, don't be like that," he told her, all kinds of amiable. "Let me give you a lift."

Whitney kept walking, consciously making sure not to let her feet carry her faster, the way they wanted to.

This was probably just a bit of overly pushy civility. He was probably just going to drive on as soon as she declined again. Whitney had no reason to think any different. But there had also been a night, not too many years ago, that she had also spent at a friend's house, helping her care for a two black eyes, a split lip, and four cracked ribs after having had the audacity to tell a man at a bar with impeccable kindness that no, she didn't need him to buy her a drink. He had cornered her in the parking lot as she'd been leaving, thinking she would be safe in the small, well-lit space. Whitney wasn't sure the girl ever felt safe again after that.

As for herself, she had seen – and heard – enough in her almost-thirty years of life to know that it didn't always matter how polite you were, how prettily you smiled or how sweetly you talked. It wasn't always good enough. Sometimes simply saying no was tantamount to a grievous insult, the punishment for which could be severe, and which occasionally came down to a price paid with death.

She scanned the empty road in front of her, trying to calculate how much farther it was to the camp property. Too much farther to run. Her eyes shot to the trees to her left, thick and dense here, possibly enough to help her gain some ground and hide if she had to.

She was already unconsciously trying to note distinguishing marks on the car, of the man's face. She had already recalled part of the license plate and the numbered vinyl sticker she'd glimpsed on the rear window that identified vehicles for specified parking – before she remembered how little good any of it would do her. Even if she could get the phone out of the duffle where it was buried underneath groceries, and even if she got a hold of the police there was no way they would be able to get to her in time. She was in the middle of bum-fuck nowhere and she was on her own.

It was funny, she had stopped thinking about these kinds of dangers; the kind of dangers only other people posed, far more unpredictable and sometimes more dangerous than any to be found in the woods. It had been so easy to forget when she had spent so long in a place where the worst thing that could happen to her would likely be a result of her own stupidity.

Steeling herself, she offered the man another tight smile. "I appreciate it," she said, perhaps a bit too firmly, "but I'm fine. Thank you."

Angling her face back to the road in front of her, she kept walking.

For a few long, uncomfortable seconds he kept pace with her. Then the truck slowed further, fell back, and a shock of pure alarm snapped through her. But she didn't react.

Not until she heard the steady rumble of the engine cut and the click of the door latch.

In one fluid movement she dropped the bag cradled between her arms, shrugged the backpack and duffle from her shoulders, and bolted for the trees.

A shout chased her. She paid it no mind, dodging between trees and heavy foliage to gain as much distance as swiftly as she could. She was slower than she should be, the weariness dragging at her knees and whining in the muscles of her legs and back. But maybe she wouldn't need to push. Maybe he hadn't followed her. Maybe he'd decided she was more trouble than she was worth, gotten back in his shiny truck, and drove off.

The crash of a heavy weight into dry brush behind her told her she was not that lucky.

 _Oh, shit. Shit,_ shit.

She pushed. Hard. Hard enough for the complaint in her legs to become a full on scream. Her heart was a concussive thunder inside her own skull, her breath short and hard and completely incorrectly measured for a sprint like this – not that she could have corrected it with the fear and adrenaline flooding her system as though a dam had given way.

Launching herself over what remained of a rotted stump, she groped at her back pocket for the knife that wasn't there.

Here was the _exact_ reason Jason had given it to her (although he'd probably thought she would need it for something like a coyote, not…this) and like an idiot she'd gone and _forgotten_ it. It would be right where she had left it on the little table by the lodge door, utterly useless. Her only hope now was that she either outpace or outlast, and quite frankly neither seemed likely. The driver was still coming, and she was waning fast.

Why couldn't he just have been a nice stranger who took _no_ at face value and respected it enough to leave her be? Why couldn't he have just passed her by? What cosmic force had she offended so badly to deserve this?

The weight slammed into her from behind, nearly driving her to the ground. The wind left her in a choked wheeze. He had her by the arm, fingers biting into the flesh above her elbow, tight enough to hold her fast even when she thrashed and tried to dig her nails into the tender skin between his fingers. The panic already blazing in her burned white hot.

"Now why'd you have to go and do a thing like that?" he panted, and though he sounded calm, almost pleasant, she could feel the quivering tension in his too-tight grip indicating he was good and pissed. "I was _trying_ to be nice."

She lashed out with a foot, the heel of her shoe striking shin instead of the knee she was aiming for. Her fingernails raked down the back of his hand, gouging deep into skin. He cursed, his other hand fisting in the back of her sweatshirt to yank her around.

"Let go!" she shouted, trying to sound fierce but succeeding only in a panicked cry. " _Let go_ of me!"

She threw her weight to one side, trying to tip him off balance in the hope she could twist free and get back to running…however far she could get with the burning stitch in her side. He swore again spreading his feet with a flail to keep from tumbling to the dirt. His elbow clipped her under the jaw. Her teeth clacked together, her head jerking so sharply back that she spent half a second absolutely certain she was going to black out. She probably would have if he'd been actively _trying_ to hit her. Hell, she was lucky she hadn't bitten straight through her own tongue.

She swayed, trying to pitch herself sideways, to twist and squirm and whatever else she could think to do to get him off. But with her head buzzing and half her face on fire it was difficult to focus.

He locked other arm around her and wrenched her backward into his lean, wiry body. She thought she heard a drawn-out hiss of _bitch_ against her hair, or else her ears were ringing.

When she heard the quick, low-pitched whistle she thought nothing of it, imagining it to be her brain compensating for having rattled around in her skull. Then she felt it. The man staggered as though he'd taken a kick to the back of the knee, his yell of startled pain intertwined with the meaty squelch of something sharp slicing into flesh.

That was no hallucination.

" _Augh,_ wha—!" the man at her back bellowed, his grip flexing at her arm so that she felt tingling in the tips of her fingers.

She craned her head to one side, then the other, trying to see what had happened but finding nothing but the grimace on her attacker's thin face, flushed red with anger and exertion.

Out of the corner of her eye she caught movement – a flicker of shadow amidst the green – and she angled her chin over her right shoulder, eyes searching the trees. Her breath left her in a broken rush, her heart stuttering like a candle flame when she saw the off-white flash of the mask.

Jason slipped from between two trees on silent feet, stalking toward them like a big cat. There was a bow as long as she was held in one fist, the other setting an arrow to a string that had to have at least a seventy-pound draw weight. Possibly more.

Smooth as a knife through butter he pulled the string back to his ear and on instinct she twisted away to offer up the target at her back. Only belatedly did she realize that she should have turned the other way, made clearer the distinction between where she ended and the truck driver began to lessen the chance that Jason might hit her without meaning to. A projectile with that much power behind it might have cut clean through a grown man and sink into her on the other side.

She needn't have worried.

The arrow hit him in the side. She felt it in her own back, the pressure radiating through one body and into hers, but she felt no sting, no burn of pain, no punch of an arrowhead through her skin. Whether by practice or just incredible control, it had not gone through. The impact drew a scream ragged and breaking with a gasp.

The grip on her failed and Whitney lurched away, throwing herself into the gnarled old fir tree to her left. She leaned heavily against the rough trunk, nails curling into the bark as she clung and dragged air into her lungs.

When she looked back, the driver was clutching at the arrow shaft protruding from his side, skin slick with the blood soaking his flannel shirt in a blooming dark stain. There was another arrow lodged in the meat of his calf – the source of his initial stagger, she surmised. That one had gone right through, point and fletching sticking out from each side like one of those prank headbands in cartoons. Only this one gleamed shiny and red, and was very, very real.

"Uhg, god…" the driver wheezed, sinking weakly to one knee. From the liquid burble that laced his voice, the lung had been grazed, if not pierced through.

She was shaking, in adrenaline or rage or a noxious cocktail of the two. But there was no fear. She wasn't afraid now. Which was fascinating, because she hadn't seen Jason look quite like this since the night she had seen him for the first time; the wrath in him burning black as brimstone straight from hell.

Scratch that. She wasn't sure she'd ever seen him this angry. She was almost surprised the grass under his feet didn't wither and die he was putting off so much furious heat. He hadn't stopped moving – not even, she suspected, while shooting – his strides long and unhurried as dropped the bow and descended on the wounded man like a beautiful, terrible avenging angel.

 _You should have let me go,_ she thought, as her eyes fell from him to the driver who had just looked up to see the man bearing down on him, radiating death.

How he didn't immediately piss himself was completely beyond her.

"W-what the _shit,_ man?" he stammered, the indignant, pain-addled bewilderment in his words a living, shuddering thing.

Did he think this was a joke? A prank? Even if he wasn't a local and simply passing through, it shouldn't take a genius to put together that the scary man in the mask with the big fucking knife that had just shot him through the ribs had no intentions aside from doing serious and lethal harm. And it should take less of a genius to realize that _she_ wasn't screaming, or attempting to flee, and that maybe the two things might be related.

A length of mere yards was between them now, and it seemed to hit the driver all of a sudden that he was probably not leaving this spot of woods alive. His back stiffened, his shoulder hunching defensively almost up to his ear.

"No, wait…" he began. Blood was trickling from between his lips, dripping down his chin, and Whitney couldn't look anywhere else.

Five yards.

She could stop this. Right there in that breathless eternity of a moment, she knew it. All she had to do was ask and the man would be left to crawl back to his truck – grievously wounded, but alive. Would he have made it to a hospital way out here? Maybe, maybe not. But he would have had a chance.

Jason's hand went to his belt, freeing the machete from its holster with a whisper of steel.

He didn't need the blade to put the fear of god in anyone who crossed his path. He was a weapon unto himself, and he _was_ menace, pure and undiluted. She was by no means the first person to think it, though perhaps to do so quite so calmly.

Three yards.

"Wait!"

Two.

"No, _please n—_!"

Jason struck like a rattlesnake, seizing the man by the front of his shirt and throwing him to the ground flat on his stomach with a thud and a gurgling cry. Planting a knee against his back, Jason wrapped an empty hand about the shaft of the arrow buried between ribs and pulled it free with sharp, brutal jerk.

He showed no reaction when the man gave a burbling whimper, but she could see the heat in his eyes behind the mask, the burning dark fury the likes of which she had only seen once: when he'd looked at Clay. When he'd looked at Clay and saw another man with their hands on a woman he'd as good as claimed. In any other man she might have thought the rage stemmed in part from a kind of jealousy, but Jason wasn't jealous. This wasn't a man lashing out due to insecurity or uncertainty. He was _territorial._ Jealousy was to want something that wasn't his; to be territorial was to protect what already was.

A part of her might have bristled at that…but honestly, it felt rather accurate just now.

Whitney would have sworn Jason's eyes flicked up to rest on her, just for an instant, before tossing the arrow to the grass. His knee ground down into the driver's back, eliciting an awful gurgling scream. Bone splintered with a series of faint, popping cracks – ribs or vertebra, maybe even sternum. She flinched purely by reflex. The pain must have been…she couldn't honestly imagine. And even if she could she would have been too distracted to truly dwell on it.

The man was gasping, his breaths rattling through rapidly collapsing lungs and his bones creaked and shattered. He was spilling peas for mercy into the dirt, repeatedly, like a record skipping on its last few bars.

She had never seen Jason do this – go out of his way to inflict more pain than necessary. Granted, Amanda and Mike's deaths had each been awful and prolonged, but there had been reasons for each. Amanda had been used for her screams, to draw the rest of them in to be trapped and held until he could deal with them in turn. It was more than likely he hadn't intended her to burn to death – her struggles had caused that particular end. As for Mike, that had been the unfortunate result of an excess of rage and a victim that had fought back, plus a less than ideal leverage. This was nothing like those two deaths. This was brutality for its own sake. This was not just eliminating a pest, it was punishment.

She should have been horrified. She _should_ have stopped it.

Jason braced a hand against the back of the driver's skull, lowered the angled tip of the machete to kiss the nape of his neck. She stared, fixated, as Jason's fingers flexed against the handle, very slightly, a split instant before he drove the blade down through the base of the head, neatly severing spine and windpipe with a single smooth thrust.

Silence rose up around her, drowning out everything from the soft rustle of air through leaves to the pound of her own heartbeat.

He was dead.

She had just stood there and _let_ him die. Hadn't said a word. And she was trembling, her insides quaking in a way that had nothing to do with dread or revulsion. She wasn't even all that sorry.

It wasn't that any part of her had thought he had deserved to die, necessarily, or even because she had felt particularly vengeful for what he had done…what he might have been about to do. It was more that the rules out here were not her own. This man had not just unwittingly walked into the wrong place at the wrong time. He had _chased_ her, _grabbed_ her, _threatened_ her, and whether or not she felt these things merited punishment didn't completely matter. To Jason, they did.

A part of her understood. There had been a certain necessity to the savagery that even the last remaining shreds of her inner hand-wringing black-and-white moralist couldn't ignore. She had never really looked at his killing in a context other than one of horror or roundabout sympathy. Suddenly she saw it rather differently.

Of all the responses she might have had to this turn of events, she did not expect the delicate butterfly flutter high in her stomach – the kind of flutter usually reserved for gifts of flowers or other such sweet little gestures. Yet she supposed it made a certain sense. There was something old and primal about this drive toward someone that proved so capable of protecting her. Even in a time when such a thing shouldn't have been necessary – with the world so civilized and improved and shit – it sure as fuck felt necessary right now.

And there was no mistaking that she was the reason why Jason's dispatch of this man had been the nastiest death she'd seen him issue.

Sliding the machete free, Jason used the man's shirt to wipe it clean. He rose, standing over the felled body like some dark god of righteous judgment, still and fierce.

For a moment he simply stood there, and then his head lifted to look at her.

A soft shudder rippled through her body – awareness at its most base and elemental – at the weight of his gaze on her. The animal in her wanted to show reverence, to acknowledge the clearly far more powerful and deadly predator. In the same moment the same animal instinct was that much more certain that she had been right to choose him, because as powerful and deadly as he was, he had come for her.

How was he here? Had she been closer to the lake than she'd thought? Even if so, he would have had to have been close enough to this side of the territory to have heard her yell. Was it coincidence? Had he positioned himself there on purpose? To wait for her? But he had seemed so disbelieving when she had reassured him that she'd come back, and she hadn't exactly been planning on doing so today and thus hadn't implied it. It could have been days – weeks. Had he intended to stay there, walking the border like a ghost until the day she maybe came back? She hoped not.

Anyway, it didn't much matter how. And while it might have been a bit paranoid to have run like she had, the fact that the truck driver had chased her all that way was enough to tell her that she had been in for more than a split lip and a couple cracked ribs. If she hadn't been stupid and had her knife, it wouldn't have come to this. But it had, and she didn't give a shit if it made her seem like some shrinking damsel to be as grateful as she was that the scariest thing in the woods wanted her safe.

Fuck being a strong, independent woman.

He was still just looking at her. But the _way_ he was looking at her…as though he couldn't process that she was standing there in front of him. The disbelief in his eyes, the sheer incredulity, was so pure it burned like bleach. It wasn't just that she was there earlier than expected, it was that she was there at all.

He had truly believed she wasn't coming back. Not today. Not ever.

Knowing it was enough to break her heart straight down the middle.

She smiled weakly – it was either that or cry. "Hey."

As if hearing her speak was enough to prove she was not, in fact, just an illusion, he finally moved. He approached her slowly, almost tentatively, as though certain she would disappear were he to move too quickly or look away for just a second too long. She stayed right where she was, palm and shoulder blades resting against the bark of the tree behind her. His massive hand dwarfed her face as he took her gently by the chin, examining the sore spot along her jaw where the driver had caught her with his elbow. Red as an overripe tomato, no doubt. Likely it would swell into a welt by tomorrow.

"I'm ok," she was quick to reassure, "he wasn't actually trying to hit me."

That didn't seem to help. By the way Jason's eyes narrowed she would bet he was probably wishing he'd taken a little longer before administering the kill stroke.

"Thank you."

The words tasted right, but sounded odd to her own ears. From the indefinable look he was shooting her, it had landed just as oddly, though she couldn't be sure how much of that had to do with the fact that she had just thanked him for committing murder – an act she had so fiercely condemned before and the condemnation for which she had never hidden from him – or simply because she was there to say anything at all.

She felt him trace his thumb along her cheek. Unthinking, she lifted a hand, laying it lightly across the back of his wrist. "I'm ok," she insisted, not realizing until it left her mouth that it hadn't been the injured side of her face, and that he was no longer holding a belated threat of vengeance in his eyes, but rather looking at her like she was the only thing in the world that mattered.

The emotion overflowing from that single look was enough to make her knees weak.

That was the thing about someone guarded, she thought. When they loved you, you damn well knew it.

"I told you I was coming back," she said, mainly because she didn't know what else to say, and that if she didn't say something she was either going to start sobbing like a little girl or laughing hysterically. And _then_ sob like a little girl.

The downward tilt of his chin was minute, almost nothing at all, but she recognized it as a repeat of the one he'd used earlier: the one that said he'd heard her and acknowledged that, but which hadn't agreed.

 _So you did._

"I, um…"

Her chin trembled, and she sucked in a breath to counter it. If they didn't move she was going to bawl her eyes out right here in the middle of the woods, and she really didn't want to do that. When she cried – and it was way beyond inevitable at this point – she wanted to be somewhere that she could face-plant into a pillow and stay there until she was all cried out.

"I left some stuff out by the road."

He gave a small nod, his hand slipping from her face with a gentle brush of fingertips as he turned from her.

Retreating back into the trees from which he'd appeared for a moment, and when he returned it was with the bow and a quiver of brown leather full of arrows slung across his back. Crouching by the body, he went about extracting the arrow from the man's leg. Rather than rip this one out, he used the machete to slice into the meat of the calf down to the shaft, and lifted it straight out.

For whatever reason this made her squeamish where everything else had not. Swallowing down a shallow dry-heave, she averted her eyes while he utilized the driver's shirt again to clean most of the blood from the two arrows he'd used and tucked them away.

When he held out a hand to her, indicating for her to lead on, she made to head back for the road automatically. Only to pause a second later. "Sh—should we do something about…about him?"

Jason spared the body a disinterested glance, his snort of derision enough to tell her that he fully intended to leave the man to rot precisely as he was.

Good by her.

It disturbed her somewhat to note how cold and unforgiving she found herself just then, but only so long as it took her to remember why and how she'd come to be there. Maybe the driver hadn't deserved to die. Maybe he simply hadn't gotten around to doing whatever might have earned him such a sentence. He had intended her harm of some kind, and frankly she would not have been willing to stay the judgment for the sake of finding out. Another rather old and primal instinct, she supposed. She was willing to forgive herself for it.

Fortunately she had managed to drop her things somewhat gracefully before racing off like a panicked chipmunk, which hopefully meant nothing had been broken in the fall. Though she supposed the only thing truly at risk would have been the phone, which had been well-padded by clothes and groceries.

The paper bag had tipped over, spilling packets of trail mix and jerky across the embankment, and when she straightened from scooping everything back inside it was to find Jason settling both duffle and backpack over his shoulder. She thought better of arguing about it, since she already knew he wouldn't budge on the issue. That and she simply didn't have the energy. She had already been tired, and now with adrenaline leeching out of her she was well on her way to exhausted.

Folding the paper bag she tucked it under her arm, and reached out to take his empty hand.

"Let's go home."

His hand flexed around hers – a sharp spasm of surprise. She didn't put together why until she looked up at him and saw the wideness of his eyes, his shock at her having used that word in reference to the lodge, the camp. _Him._

She hadn't really said it consciously, it had just slipped out naturally, and now that she realized that she had no thought of correcting it. There was nothing to correct. She had rejected the opportunity to go back to the house she had spent the last ten years of her life in because what had made it a home was no longer there. Home was more than walls and a roof, more than possessions, more even than people. Home was a place where she was most at ease, and free to be her truest self. Home was safety and comfort, and happiness.

Gently she squeezed his hand, and started walking.

~/~

As soon as he left her, Jason went about putting as much space between himself and the camp side of the property as he physically could.

Every muscle in his body was tight with the urge to follow her. Not the way he would have a new quarry – it was nothing like the demanding pull of the tithe weighing down on him. But the gradually increasing urgency was similar. Everything inside him was screaming with the need to get to her, to hold her close and never let go again, and the farther away she got the more he felt the loss of her like a pain in his gut, cold and nagging and hollow.

His thoughts continuously spiraled outward as if reaching, clinging to the woman no longer there, whose absence felt like a hole punched deep in the center of his being. For no reason at all he recalled a phrase; something overheard and tossed aside from a source he no longer remembered: _absence makes the heart grow fonder._

But that wasn't quite true, was it? He had already been fonder. Absence just felt like pain.

Even after he knew there was no likely chance of her being remotely near the borders of the territory he had every intention of steering clear. For days if he had to. Not that he had any idea how he was going to make it through the rest of this day let alone others. Not think of her, he supposed, as if that was possible. He was still going to try.

Four days ago he had been halfway through checking his caches before he'd stumbled across the two trespassers on the lake. At the time he had been displeased that the caches were so widely distributed, the task so time consuming. Now he could think of no better distraction.

He got through two, maybe three. Time and therefore what he did with it ran together. The sunshine of the morning had been swallowed by a monotone overcast light as though the sun itself had gone with her, making it difficult to determine the hour. He'd been picking his way through a particularly hilly stretch along the eastern border when the deer crossed his path.

With a frantic rustle of foliage the animal bounded down from the rocky slope and straight into the trees, but not before Jason had identified it as a young buck and glimpsed the wound in its flank. Several long gouges made by a bear or, more likely, a lion. Not deep enough to kill quickly, but enough to fester and rot – to become infected, as Whitney would have called it.

The thought of her brought a stinging twinge of pain. Automatically his hand rose, fingers curling around the little plastic card stowed safely over his heart.

 _Enough._

With a sharp shake of his head he forced his hand down and ordered himself to focus. The deer would be in for a slow and agonizing death unless Jason did something. As he had no way to contain and treat a wound of that magnitude he would have to put it down, and that would require a projectile. He didn't want to chase the poor thing down on foot. The fear that would cause would have been beyond cruel.

Jason made for the nearest cache that he knew contained a bow ready for use. It meant having to circle around toward the lake and doubling back, but so much the better. The only hurry he was in was for the sake of the creature in pain.

The cache was set at the base of a dead stump, tucked between a tangle of roots and down into the earth. He extracted the bow, two strings – coiled and stored in separate plastic re-sealable bags – and the fully stocked quiver he had just checked an hour or so (or longer, who knew) ago, and put the rest back in place, rearranging the roots to hide the weatherproof bundle.

One of the strings he tucked into a pocket on the off chance the first broke. A rarity, but after the third time it happened he had stopped taking the chance. The second he uncoiled, looping the first end into place around the notches at the lower limb.

For Jason, learning to string a bow had been harder than learning to shoot. It required just as much strength to string as to draw, but it was more difficult due to having to force two parts with opposing force to come together in order to create the tension which allowed the weapon to function as intended. When he was younger he'd had difficulty; his attempts resulting in welts and cuts to the hands, arms, once even his face. Over the years however he'd developed a good technique, and being as large as he was now he no longer needed the extra steps it used to require.

Lowering the bottom end to the ground he tucked the lowermost curve bow against a foot and bent, forcing the weapon into a gentle flex in order to slip the other end of the string into place. Smooth, quick, easy. Slipping the strap of the quiver over his head so that it sat across his back and out of the way until he needed it, he set off back to where he'd seen the deer.

From the spot by the rocks Jason tracked the animal almost a mile northward before the tracks began to look fresh. Deer were a little more difficult to track than some beasts – and certainly more so than people. They were sleeker, lighter, and moved with such unthinking care. Because of this it took him longer than it might have elsewise, requiring him to stop, crouch, double-check the patterns in dirt and leaves and forest refuse to ensure he knew what he was looking at. His right eye being slightly weaker than the left didn't help this.

At some point the tracks would either grow closer together or sloppy, indicating the animal was either tiring or weakening. Then he would be near enough to begin stalking in earnest.

He was crouched by a spongy patch of moss examining the splash of blood across the prints when he heard it.

It took him a few seconds to piece together what exactly it was he'd heard, that it had not been the product of a mind becoming steadily unhinged. That he'd heard a voice.

 _Her_ voice.

But that wasn't possible. How could that be possible? She had left hours ago, there was no way she could still be so close…

It came again, a trembling cry that he would have recognized even from the grave.

" _Let go_ of me!"

He knew that tone. He had become quite familiar with it over the span of a few days, the meld of fear and command held tight and high in the throat as she'd tossed those same exact words at him. And he was up and moving, running before he could question it, before he could wonder how it was possible to be hearing her now, here, close enough to make out her words. The low note of terror in them.

The sound had come from across the border: out of bounds. He didn't care. He wouldn't have cared if he had to venture all the way to the town. Beyond it. He would have walked straight into hell if he had to.

He ran as if trying to outrun time itself, racing between trees as though he had become the deer he had been tracking, light and swift and half consumed by the frantic pulse of the blood in his own veins.

He caught a glimpse of her from between low-hanging branches, slowing at the flash of copper. Only when he saw her did the panic in her voice make sense, only when he registered what it was he was seeing; the arm clamped around her middle meant to restrain, the hand locked around her arm and yanking back. Her head was tipped back as if fighting to breathe, or fighting back tears, and the man behind her was muttering something low under his breath, too quietly for Jason to hear. But she could, and whatever it was had put that look of dazed, hopeless dread on her face.

The sight struck him swift and hard as a fist to the gut, burning like he'd been force-fed embers. His lips curled back, the snarl ripping through him – voiceless, but vicious – as his vision went black.

The ferocity of his own reaction was overwhelming, but it did not surprise him. Four days ago he had been faced with the thought of her being taken from him and it had driven him to rage. He had thought of her as his even as he'd known subconsciously she hadn't been, that it had been a wish and no more, and he had supposed that had stoked his rage even more than the deed itself – because he'd had no real right to feel what he did. But seeing her now, like this, at the mercy of some vile human man who so clearly meant her harm…he understood with unshakable certainty that that had changed. His fury was purely a possessive, bestial thing, a deep-set animal instinct to protect something precious. Not, he realized, because she was his. But because she had chosen him, and that made him hers.

The clawing pull behind his ribs was not that of a secondhand vengeance but one that was purely his, an urgent, barbarous need to destroy.

Whitney made a tiny sound in the back of her throat dangerously close to a strangled sob. And oh, this death would be slow. So slow, and Jason would make sure he felt every agonizing _second_ of it.

Almost without thinking he reached for an arrow, setting it to the string and drawing so quickly that he was barely aware of doing it until the thing pierced the flesh of the man's calf, right behind and under the knee.

The man screeched, jolting forward, but did not crumple and did not release her. If anything his grip tightened further as he cursed and jerked his head around to locate the source of his injury.

Jason growled his displeasure and reached over his shoulder, fingers curling under the feather fletching of another arrow.

Whitney's face angled toward him, her eyes passing over him at first before darting back, settling, widening ever so slightly with a dawning recognition. She twisted away on instinct, shielding herself with the body at her back, not realizing that this put her in more danger than she had been with her profile to him. The weapon in his hand was meant for hunting, built to be lethal. His aim was expert, as was his control, but the potential of making just enough of a mistake brought an unpleasant hitch to his breath.

He forced it to steady and took two long, quick steps to the right as he nocked the arrow, adjusting his grip to hold the bow at a horizontal angle and drawing only halfway to better control depth. The shot was not clean, and not ideal, but he took it. He only breathed again when the man gave a broken scream and let go, releasing Whitney to stumble away unscathed. The second that happened, he dropped the bow and widened his steps, fingers closing around the handle of the machete and pulling it free as his wrath surged within him like a storm.

Jason's eyes were fixed to the man, staggering and dropping to one knee as he groped weakly for the shaft buried between his sixth and seventh ribs. The lung was filling up with blood, beginning to collapse. Painful, but not enough. Not nearly. Jason was going to shatter every bone in every finger this insect had dared to lay on her before he removed them completely, before he rent each limb from its socket. He was going to rip the eyes from his skull, split him open until his insides pooled at his feet, and Jason would hate it, but he was going to do it anyway. Because the world should be terrified when a monster like him fell in love, for he would rend the very _earth_ open for her.

The man had been speaking, pleading for his life, no doubt, but Jason hadn't heard for the roaring in his head. His hand curled into flannel and twisted, casting the parasite to the ground and bent to rip the arrow free – the head scraping bone.

He couldn't have said what it was that reminded him of Whitney's presence. She had made no sound, moved not a single muscle where she stood, back pressed to the trunk of a tree not yards away and clinging there as if it was the sole thing keeping her upright – but he found himself glancing up at her as if she had. Though she was staring at him, her gaze was unexpectedly steady. Shock, he assumed. Maybe something else. Either way, he would not be doing any of the things the bloodthirsty part of his soul was clamoring for. Not in front of her.

He would make it fast, clean, but it was going to _hurt_ first.

Jason crouched, lowering a knee to the man's back and putting his weight behind it – pressing steadily downward until he heard bone crackle and snap like green twigs. A gurgling wail emitted from the man's mouth, accompanied, no doubt, by an ooze of blood from between his lips. Jason pressed until he felt the spine give, the tiny bones digging into the discs between until they finally burst, and only then did he set his blade to the back of the whimpering worm's head and put him out of his misery. It wasn't completely satisfying, but Jason contented himself with the knowledge that while it had taken less than eight seconds, it would have felt like a lifetime.

Wrenching the blade free, he ran the flat of it along the back of the man's shirt to wipe it clean and got to his feet. He was sliding it back into place in its sheath when the confusion caught up to him – the disbelief.

His eyes slid to Whitney, still right where she'd been seconds ago, leaning against the tree.

She was here. Why was she here? If she had ever been going to come back he had assumed it wouldn't be for months. Had it been months? Had time warped into a void of nothing until the moment he'd heard her voice again? Perhaps he had gone mad. Maybe none of this was real, no more than a hallucination and he simply could no longer tell the difference anymore.

Her lips curved into a shaky smile. "Hey," she said, the movement of her mouth drawing his attention to the redness at her cheek, radiating outward from a point at her jaw.

He'd hit her. The steaming pile of human refuse had _struck_ her.

If he'd had the power, Jason would have resurrected the filth just to kill him again – only much more slowly, drawing out the pain for hours if he could. Except that fortunately for said filth, Whitney was neither vengeful nor vindictive enough to have wished such a thing on even someone who had done her harm.

Before he was fully aware of moving he was in front of her, his fingers gentle as he tilted her face so he could get a better look at the mark. It would swell, he determined, become a full-on welt if she didn't get something cold on it soon.

"I'm ok," she was telling him, "he wasn't actually trying to hit me."

Jason was grateful she couldn't see his lip curl. Gladder still that his lack of voice meant she wouldn't hear his growl.

Then – out of nowhere – she thanked him.

 _Thanked_ him.

He didn't understand. Thank him for what, for protecting her? As if he wouldn't have given everything he had – his own flesh if he must – to ensure she was safe? For being near enough to do so? And thank heaven and earth he had been. It was well worth the misery of the rest of the day for chance to have granted him this one mercy. If he hadn't been, if he hadn't heard her, if she had been left out here to suffer whatever horrible things the man had been intending…he could grasp better now what some of those things might have been and the thought of it made his stomach turn and his heart constrict.

He felt her hand brush his wrist, her fingers curving gently around the back of his hand. "I'm ok," she said again, clearly with the intent to soothe. But something in her eyes changed when he continued to look at her, as he cradled her face in his hand, softened, warmed. "I told you I was coming back," she murmured, so quiet it was almost a whisper.

Yes, she had, and he in his weakness and self-loathing he hadn't been able to bring himself to believe her.

Words were darting through his head in a continuous stream, things he so dearly wanted to say to her but couldn't. _You came back._ _I missed you. It's only been hours but I missed you. I wasn't sure how I was going to survive if I never got to see your face again, or hear your voice, feel your skin. I love you so much I can't breathe._

He would never doubt again.

Frankly, he didn't care why she'd come back, so long as she had.

He followed her back to the road to gather the bags she had left behind. Dropped, he corrected, as he took note of the truck parked a ways back with a spark of rekindled anger. In order to flee.

He took pride in her ability to think quickly enough to ditch the extra weight immediately, and in knowing that had she not been tired and worn already she probably could have outrun the threat, or dealt enough injury on her own to make the worm think twice about putting hands on her. Had she been carrying the blade he'd given her, anyway. She wasn't, which he'd known before due to its absence but confirmed now with a glance to her back pocket as she bent to gather up the packages of food scattered across the pavement. And if the look lingered a little too long to be purely for the sake of verifying a fact, he did his best not to feel guilty about it.

As she finished scooping items back into a paper bag he took possession of the other two: the one he'd given her this morning, and the other which smelled like her brother. So she had gone to see him. And yet she'd come back so quickly, though surely her brother would have discouraged it. Clearly whatever other things she had been planning to see to had either fallen through or else would be addressed again later. He would have asked if he could. Though perhaps not, since he wasn't sure his curiosity was worth disturbing whatever decision had brought her back so soon.

If any part of him had been in denial that she had returned because of him, it was eradicated when she tucked her hand in his, folding her fingers around his own, and asked him to take her home.

Wordless for reasons beyond his muteness, he did.

He delivered her straight to the lodge, taking his leave only to fetch the cooler and detour to the stream to fill it with cold water.

She was still in the midst of unpacking and putting things away when he got back, which he rather rudely interrupted by forcing her to turn around so he could put the damp, cool cloth to her jaw to ease the swelling – something he only knew to do because of the black eye he'd sustained once as a child. For the second time since her arrival he cursed his lack of a way to produce ice. The cold water would help, but not nearly as much or as quickly.

She laughed at his insistence, and winced when doing so brought pain. He frowned, unsure sure what to do about that. But when she lowered the cloth for a moment it was to extract a little case of pills from her bag, two of which she tipped out into her palm and swallowed dry, seemingly not requiring water. He took up the cloth again and laid it back against her face. She smiled. No wince this time.

He made her stay there, not moving except to switch out the cloth for another one, which she tolerated for around ten minutes before she waved him off and went back to unpacking. At the same time she set herself out something to eat: crackers and peanut butter and fresh vegetables all from little packages that were probably intended more for between-meal snacks than an actual meal.

He watched her vaguely, more attentive to the sounds than anything else – the rustle of clothing and of plastic, the scrape of a ceramic plate, the click of the lid on a plastic jar of peanut butter.

And then there came the whimper. Deep, almost guttural, the kind of sound that might have preceded being sick…or followed an injury.

Jason's head lifted, eyes landing sharp on her where she stood at the counter, her profile to him. She was leaning with her hands against the laminate edge, shoulders hunched and shivering. Then she inhaled, shuddering and laborious, and he realized that she crying.

He went to her, hardly thinking about anything but closing the space between himself and her. Reaching carefully, he brushed her hair back from her face to find her chin trembling, her cheeks gone pale and her eyes overbright and flooded. She blinked at him, looking dazed and a little lost, tears slipping from her eyes to draw shining trails down her face.

"I'm sorry, I—"

The word dissolved into a sob, and then she was falling into him, burying her face in his shirt and wrapping her arms around his waist and holding on so tightly that he almost feared she might break her own bones with the force.

He had never particularly liked it when she cried. At first it had been more an annoyance, a disturbance in the form of sound he was utterly unaccustomed to hearing for prolonged amounts of time. Then it had begun to bother him because he hadn't relished the idea of her being sad. Now, though the sight of her tears, the hard, dragging sound of her sobs, didn't just bother him – it _upset_ him. It instilled in him a deep, visceral need to find whatever was wrong and do whatever it took to make it _not_ wrong.

She was sinking, sliding down toward the floor as though her legs were no longer capable of holding her up; so he bent, gripping her firmly around the ribs. Taking one of her hands, he coaxed her to wrap it around his neck instead and was pleased when she did so, clinging to the back of his coat with both hands so he could tuck his other arm behind her knees and pick her up.

Unsure what else to do, he carried her into the other room. She had returned the couch cushions to their proper places – before leaving, he assumed – and he went to it, lowering them both to the cracking old imitation leather.

His hand smoothed cautiously down her back, down and back up then down again, following the gentle taper and slope along her spine. He hoped to be soothing, but he had never really comforted someone before, never wanted to and this never tried. He couldn't be sure he wasn't simply being a clumsy annoyance. At least until he felt her deep, shuddering sigh beneath his palm.

One of her hands lifted, shoving strands of hair from her wet cheeks as she looked up. "Sorry," she said thickly, sniffling. "I just—my…"

Closing her eyes she forced herself to take a slow, measured breath, grounding herself.

"I found out today that my mom died."

Dread pooled within the pit of his stomach, awful and sinking and cold.

"I mean, I already kind of knew. She was sick— _really_ sick—for years and the doctors had said she only had a few weeks when I left, so I—I had a feeling…but I couldn't really think about it, and _thinking_ something's probably true and knowing it is just," she took another shuddering breath, "it's different."

Jason stared down at her, stricken.

No wonder she had been trying so hard to run away. She'd been trying to get back to her dying mother while he had _kept her here…_ and why? Because he hadn't been able to kill her and had been too selfish and controlling to let her go. And all along she might have been the only person alive to perhaps understand even a fraction of the loss he had once suffered.

Self-loathing pooled in his mouth like poison, his skin burning where she touched him as if the soft weight of her had become acidic. He wanted to push her away, wanted to fall to his knees before her and beg her forgiveness. He didn't deserve it. He would never deserve it, but he owed it to her to ask and be denied for this far more grievous wrong than simply holding her against her will. How could she have known this and ever looked at him with anything but hatred? How could she ever have let him _near_ her, let alone…

 _God,_ how could he claim to _love_ her when he had done something like this?

But he did, and that was why it hurt so much – why it felt like something alive and panicked trying to bite and tear its way out of him like an animal from a trap.

He had braced his hand against her shoulder, preparing to ease her away, but found he could go no further. Clearly she didn't blame him for this – however impossible it was for his brain to make sense of – and equally clear was that she was in need of comfort from him now, not penance. Almost the instant he'd touched her in the kitchen she had gravitated toward him as if he were solid land on the edge of death by drowning.

"I just need to cry for a bit," she said weakly, "that's all."

He couldn't change the past. He couldn't undo what he'd done. Not even to her. But as Whitney curled up against it, her head bowing as it came down upon his shoulder, he understood that she wouldn't have wanted him to try. The past was past. He could only control the future, and could make it better. He could _be_ better.

He _would_ be.

Her fingers curled into the front of his shirt, and he held her as she gave over to the sob that had been building in her breath.

She cried and cried for what seemed like hours. The kind of crying that was like seeing a hurricane contained in a human body to witness, powerful and devastating, all the while he stroked her hair, her back, cradling her to him in the way that felt natural. She cried until her sobs grew faint and hoarse, until her back no longer heaved but rose and fell and the hitches in her breathing stopped.

He wasn't sure exactly when she fell asleep, or even when exactly he'd known she had. Maybe when the hand fisted in his shirt went slack and began to slip. But he was glad of it. Grieving and exhausted, rest was the best thing for her.

Careful not to jostle her, he shifted setting his back to the inner corner of the couch and propping one leg up so that if she stretched out in her sleep, she would have the room to. His laid his hand over hers where it rested against his chest, the tips of index and middle fingers stroking softly across the back of it. Settling the other across her back, he closed his eyes.

It was a strange thing, he thought, to have become so lost in someone, yet not be lost at all.

* * *

 **NOTES:**

Holy shit you guys, this is crazy.

I don't think I've cranked out content this fast since I was in high school scribbling into a notebook during classes, physically curled around my paper so no one could read over my shoulder and NOT paying attention to what I was supposed to be doing. I was not a good student. But this is fucking awesome. And maybe it's mania as a result of this current insanity…but if that's the case, I'll take it.

This chapter is more cliché than is justifiable, but I don't care. Fan service. That said, I do feel like the encounter with the trucker might have leaned into some less than awesome stereotypes, and I just want to clarify that it was not my intention to make any implication about men, men who drive trucks, or people who live in the more rural parts of the country. This was just an individual dude used as a means to make a point and for fan service, and any unsavory qualities he displayed were put there in the service of that. No more. City dudes are just as capable of being douchey as country dudes, or any other dudes. Or not. That's all.

I love writing. I get to research the weirdest shit. With this story in particular I had to watch a bunch of youtube videos on setting up snares, which I never would have done otherwise, but I wanted to be somewhat accurate. This chapter it was bow anatomy. I've done a little bit of archery, and I'd like to again someday, but it was high school level not really legit archery and the instruction was not great so I didn't actually learn much. For such a tiny part, one of the hardest things about this chapter was how deep into the anatomy of the bow to go for the sake of accurate description while not being confusing. Bows seem simple, but they're actually a bit more complicated. I hope it wasn't confusing. :/

If you Google hunting bows you'll see these crazy gear-and-pulley-ridden monsters. I don't hunt and they're probably awesome, but I find them extremely visually off-putting (because that matters). I also feel like they'd require a lot more upkeep than would be possible for Jason's lifestyle…though it's also probably more likely that one in that style would be left behind. Whatever. This is a wood and fiberglass recurve specimen. Not that anyone cares but me!

:D

ANYWHO. I think that's all I've got for now. Gonna start work on the next one!

First though HOLY SHIT AND THANK YOU – I don't know if more of you commented than usual, but it sure fucking felt like it and it was incredible and sweet and uplifting and I swear to goodness it fuels the passion. You darlings are the best and I love you so much. Thank you for reading and for the favorites and follows and lovely comments. You give me life.

Bless.

Until next time – be well!


	23. Her Sweet Kiss

**.**

 **CHAPTER 23**  
Her Sweet Kiss

~/13/~

Whitney didn't remember falling asleep. She didn't even remember having felt sleepy enough to do so, but she must have done, for she was very aware of waking. Though it was a slow, groggy business. She fought it; going so far as to press her face deeper into her pillow in an attempt to convince her brain that it was still sleeping time, even though she knew the effort was entirely wasted.

God, she was tired. Grief did that: collect in the layers of the body like cement, weighing heavy, sapping strength and energy. She wanted to sleep for weeks, if she could. In fact she was not all that certain she hadn't done just that, judging by the dull ache in her muscles and the state of her mouth – dry and scratchy as cotton wool.

She turned her head, smoothing her cheek across the pillow. It was an interesting texture, smooth, warm, but unusually firm.

Wait.

Not a pillow.

The events of the day rushed back to her in a stream: waves of heightened emotion and action more strenuous than perhaps she'd been prepared for, all of it culminating in her breakdown in the kitchen where she'd latched onto Jason and clung like a barnacle while proceeding to sob her guts out. And apparently she hadn't moved from that spot.

Good gravy, how long had they been there? How long had she been _asleep_ , draped on top of him like a weepy blanket and a thoroughly less than useful one at that?

Opening her eyes to narrow slits, she noted the tightness in the skin of her face – the direct result of so much crying. Her eyes felt puffy, but not as much as they might have, probably thanks to the nap. Yet as she blinked a few times to adjust, she found herself confused.

She wasn't on the couch. She wasn't even in the rec room, but the tiny little bedroom upstairs. They were in roughly the same position as she remembered; Jason sitting up, with her curled up against him, only now they were on the untouched double bed. He had his back propped against the wall at the head of it, the leg she could see from where she lay propped up on a bent knee. She had been draped with a blanket, the edges tucked carefully up around her shoulders. Care had been taken to cover her feet as well, though in her sleep she appeared to have poked one out from under the edge. And the light…she couldn't put her finger on it, but the light was wrong.

She must have stirred or made a sound, for the hand resting still against her back moved then, smoothing gently down the length of her spine and back up. Calming and sweet.

Stretching out her legs, she lifted her head from where she'd been using his chest as a pillow to look at him.

"Sorry," she said, her voice cracking slightly. Oof, she needed water something serious.

As if he'd read her mind (or just recognized the need), Jason lifted his hand from her back and reached for something behind her. He produced a glass of water, which she took gratefully and gulped – at first with difficulty, and then with a surprising gusto.

"Thanks," she sighed when she'd finished, and he returned the half-empty glass back to what she assumed was the tiny little bedside table she remembered glimpsing during her walk-through. "But I'm so sorry, I did not mean to fall asleep on you."

Rubbing her face with a hand she suppressed a yawn and sat up a little straighter, tucking her knees under the bend of his. She had almost forgotten the blow to the face she'd taken yesterday, might have if she hadn't felt a faint twinge. _Faint_ being the key word. The soreness was almost completely gone. She was impressed – the cold cloth must have done more good than she'd expected.

"How long have I been out?"

She wasn't sure how he would answer that question, indicating the hours, maybe. But he held up his left hand, palm open and held aloft, and brought it down in an arc. She blinked at him, trying to decode, and he patiently repeated the gesture, wiggling his fingers slightly as if that was supposed to help. Which, it kind of did, though she didn't know how.

"Is that—sunset?"

He nodded, and she glanced over her shoulder toward the window. It was propped open, which must be why it didn't smell like dust and musty fabric in the little room, but it wasn't dark outside – rather the light was soft, fresh, like that of early morning. It couldn't have been later than five or six when they'd gotten back to the lodge, which meant she'd been asleep for close to _twelve hours_.

" _Jesus,_ Jason!" she exclaimed, mortified. "You could have just moved me…" Well, he had moved her, technically speaking. "I mean, you didn't have to stay!"

Jason just regarded her, completely unbothered by her embarrassment. Calmly, he reached for the table again and produced a covered plate: the lunch she'd prepared before losing her shit and dissolving into sobs.

At the smell of peanut butter her stomach gave a loud and undignified growl. Fortunately her grief hadn't messed with her appetite.

He truly was a nurturer. He had cleaned out this room enough for it to be habitable, had changed the bedsheets at the very least, and brought her somewhere more comfortable than that shitty couch to sleep a good six years off her life. Not only had he stayed with her, he had known she would need food, even if she might not be hungry. But of course he had. If she needed something, he would provide it. She was his chosen mate, after all.

If a hint of a blush stained her cheeks at that particular thought, she ignored it, and took the plate.

He remained right where he was while she ate, stroking her back absently. She was a bit flustered by eating right there, basically on top of him, but he was so unconcerned that she eventually relaxed.

After eating everything down to the last scrapes of peanut butter, she handed him back the plate, and, happily full, leaned heavy back against him. She rested her head on his shoulder and tucked her arm around his waist, content for her world to be reduced to the slow, steady rhythm of his breathing for a moment.

What a contrast in extremes he was. He had shattered every bone in a man's torso for attacking her, then turned around to comfort and anchor her through the most violent stage of her mourning. He was like…a German Shepherd, a Pit Bull – a big dog with a fearsome reputation, fully capable of doing incredible damage while also being protective, fiercely loyal, and a lovey, tail-wagging sweetheart. Some might have said that was her influence, but she knew better.

While she might be certain that he'd always had the capacity for such caring and love, she couldn't be sure how much of it had been so badly worn by time and anger that he'd had to rebuild from the foundation. Even if that wasn't the case, even if it had been no more than a matter of opening a door in the mind, doing so had been a choice all of his own making. Not hers. Whether it had been for her sake or not, that was his business and no one else's.

It was something her mom had told her more than once, starting even before Whitney had been quite old enough to fill in the intended context; that not even the most powerful love from the strongest and most determined of women would ever be enough to change a man. He must change himself, and if he was not driven to do so then nothing in heaven and earth could make him. She had been in her mid-twenties before it occurred to her to wonder how much of those wise words had been inspired by the father she had only crumbled and fleeting memories of.

Thoughts of Ellen hurt a little bit. It didn't sting the way a fresh wound would, just a dull, sore ache. Healing, but still very much there. Yet the pain didn't prevent Whitney from wondering what her mother would have made of this strange adventure of hers. She probably would have laughed. A lot.

Which reminded her…

"Yesterday, when I said I had things to do before I came back, I was really only going for my mom." The hand at her back stilled mid-stroke, something she only vaguely noticed. "The doctors had said she had a few weeks, maybe a month, but she'd always outlasted the timelines before. I thought if there was a chance she'd powered through, I could be there with her at the…"

He'd gone stiff beneath her, fidgeting subtly as though abruptly and intensely uncomfortable. She lifted her head to look at him just in time to catch the flash of pain and guilt in his eyes before he angled his face away. And _of course_ …she should have realized how this would sound, how hearing it would affect him.

If anyone could understand what it was to lose a mother, it would be him. He related to her pain, deeply so, and it was clear that the thought of having been the cause of some of that pain, even if only secondhand, would have been devastating.

"Hey."

She lifted her arms unthinking, about to cup his face and turn his head toward her before suddenly freezing. Whether or not he was comfortable with her touching the mask, she couldn't touch it like that. She wouldn't be trying to remove it – she would never have done such a thing – but reflexively, especially right now, it might feel that way.

"Look at me, please?"

His head turned, very slightly, but not completely. And he definitely wasn't looking at her.

Laying her hand against his shoulder she rubbed gently up and down his arm, the way he had done to her back. "You didn't know," she murmured, "you didn't know _me_. This is not your fault."

His breath left him in a sharp huff – disbelief, but also disagreement. He very clearly thought it was his fault, and to a degree, she understood that. It was a fact that if not for him, she wouldn't have been stuck there. But it was also a fact that he hadn't done it out of malice. He hadn't purposefully trapped her in order to keep her from her dying mother's bedside. That mattered.

It was also a fact that she could have told him at any point.

"If I'd told you, would it have made any difference?" she asked, and his head jerked toward her, surprise and question in his eyes. "I could have told you. I didn't because I didn't think it would matter, and because I didn't want to think about it. Maybe it would have changed things, maybe it wouldn't." She found his hand and slipped her fingers between his. "Please don't punish yourself for this. I don't blame you. You shouldn't either."

He was frowning, his eyes averted down, evidently unable – or unwilling – to take her words to heart.

"I wasn't even going to come," she added idly, running her fingertips gently down his the length of his. "Here," she clarified, "on the camping trip. I wouldn't be here at all if not for Mom. She told me to come, to live my life for me for a few days instead of just sitting at home waiting for her to die. And here I am."

She smiled faintly.

"It's almost like she sent me here. Like she knew, somehow." He was looking down at their hands, watching her trace the lines in his palm by feel. But she had no doubt that he was listening. "My life back home is gone. I poured everything I had into Mom—my friends, school…my job is definitely gone. The house is just a place full of sad memories. I didn't even grow up there. I have to start over."

She closed her eyes for a moment, feeling tired again. Tired and a little overwhelmed and, weirdly, rather nervous for what she was about to say.

"My life is here now," she told him quietly, "with you. If you want."

Now she was the one avoiding his gaze. She could feel him looking at her, feel the weight of his eyes like touch against her face. Something brushed her hair. One great hand cupped the base of her skull, pulling her gently forward until her forehead met the fiberglass brow of his mask. Not unlike the way he'd told her goodbye yesterday, except this wasn't a goodbye.

It was a yes.

Guided purely by emotion, she laid her hands against the sides of his face and pressed her mouth to the not-quite-smooth surface of the plastic shielding his mouth. He couldn't feel it – not like she could – but she knew he had realized what she was doing when she felt the curl and twist of his hand in her hair, balling into a rigid fist at the base of her head. The way his breath touched her lips in a sharp, short burst, as though his lungs had suddenly stopped working in time to the hitch in his chest.

It wasn't quite as satisfying as she might have hoped, and not really what she wanted, but she was not unaware of the likelihood that this was probably the closest he'd ever come to being kissed by someone that wasn't his mother, and in quite this way. The sheer magnitude of sorrow and happiness and wonder and bitter sweetness that knowledge instilled in her was enough to completely overwhelm her.

Tucking her face into the curve of his neck she blinked back the tears that had begun to blur the corners of her eyes. He had taken his coat off, she noticed, and his shirt smelled rather more strongly like soap than she remembered. She rubbed her nose in his collar as she inhaled.

"You washed your clothes last night," she mused aloud. Evidently he had not spent the entirety of those twelve hours pinned under her sorry, comatose self. Knowing it made her feel a little better.

She twisted, trying to wedge herself closer while not accidentally kneeing him in the balls. It was a bit of a struggle. She was fighting her jeans: comfortable enough to walk around in but not so much for sleeping or lounging. The fabric was twisted around her legs and the band too tight around her hips for her liking just now.

With a grumble of annoyance she sat up, turning within the loose circle of Jason's arm. She was preparing to shift sideways, clamber over the leg he had stretched out along the length of the bed, fully intending to just strip out of her jeans and think nothing of it, when she paused. He was just sitting there, regarding her with a kind of quizzical fondness. Yet she could feel the hardness of him flush against her belly, her thighs. His body was relaxed, at rest, yet her skin went hot and her lungs seemed to tighten suddenly, though the nature of the contact hadn't changed.

She was not quite as graceful as she might have liked getting her feet to the floor, and once she did she found herself no more settled by the flat, cool hardwood. She wasn't nervous, exactly…a little giddy, a little anxious, maybe. Some might have questioned whether she was thinking straight, which she would have met with the argument that she doubted anyone was ever really thinking straight where certain things were concerned.

Slowly, she lifted a hand to the little row of buttons at the front of her shirt.

Was she actually going to do this?

Yes. Yes, she was.

She might be tired and in the middle of grieving, but there was nothing wrong with seeking comfort from someone who loved her. And if that comfort was a tad on the lascivious side, well, there was nothing wrong with that either. _He_ was the one who'd brought her to bed – not that he would know there was any meaning to that aside from the obvious.

The shirt itself didn't require the buttons to be undone in order to remove it. They were superfluous, more for look and style than purpose, but they did function. Her fingers twisted to slip them free and as she'd hoped Jason's eyes flicked down to the movement, watching closely as the loss of each button deepened the valley of her cleavage ever so slightly further.

Gripping it by the hem, she slowly lifted, pulling the green tee up and over her head. Her hair fell around her neck and shoulders, tickling the middle of her back over the clasp of her bra.

The trill of uncertainty was completely normal and to be expected. She was fairly confident, and much more so with him than she had been with anyone else to begin with, but there was always the niggling voice at the back of the mind, all worry and delicate hope. Catching her breath she looked at him, and all traces of that wary uncertainty were instantly dashed.

He was staring at her as if he'd been struck over the head with a cast iron pan, at once dazed and intent. His back was ramrod straight and he'd turned his body slightly toward her, right knee bent to lower his foot to the floor – not like he intended to stand or move, but rather like he'd needed to in order to steady himself. All she'd bared was her shoulders and her stomach, but he looked at her as if she was the most glorious thing he had ever seen.

Uncurling her fingers, she dropped her shirt to the floor. Then, trembling lightly, she brought her hand to the front of her jeans.

~/~

For well over an hour Jason had remained steadfastedly in place on the couch before removing himself. He had done so with incredible care and a slowness developed from hunting to keep from waking her, settling her gently atop the couch cushions.

He would have been content to simply stay there, but the urge to act had been nudging at him rather insistently. For one, he hadn't removed the machete before pulling her down onto the couch, and the handle was digging somewhat painfully into his side. For another, the couch itself was hard and uncomfortable and too short for her to lie down properly, and if she didn't she might wake stiff and sore. He had debated whether or not to reassemble the floor-bed, but found himself stumped by the return of the cushions to the couch and not knowing where to find a replacement. Which was when it occurred to him to check upstairs.

He knew from looking in through the ground-floor windows there was no bedroom there, but upstairs, he wasn't sure. And while he was decidedly less than enthusiastic moving around in parts of the building without her, the need was strong enough to combat his discomfort. Which had worked out in his favor.

The bedroom was small, but the bed itself was good-sized and in decent condition. He stripped it and remade it with the fresh sheets stored in the chest at the end – clean and smelling of something potently floral – which he managed with only a bit of difficulty and some minor confusion as to how the mattress cover worked. The window required a bit of force, the seal tight from years with no use and the frame warped from weather. But he got it to open without breaking it, pushing it wide to let fresh air in the way Whitney had done with the downstairs windows and doors. Used the old sheets he wiped up as much dust as he could from the floor and the furnishings, and declared it passable.

The endeavor left him covered with dust. Far too much to simply shake off, which necessitated a trip to the stream. He decided that if he would have to get them wet, he might as well wash his clothes in earnest, and did so, grateful that the sun had come back out (and how fittingly so) to dry them at least most of the way. It took several hours, which distressed him somewhat. But when he returned, clothes dry, it was to find Whitney exactly where he'd left her.

His heart squeezed. She was so exhausted, so deeply asleep that she had hardly moved at all.

Grabbing a blanket from the folded stack on the seat of a chair, he draped it over her, then lifted her carefully into his arms to carry her up the stairs.

He laid her on the bed, leaving her just long enough to fetch the plate of food she'd abandoned in the wake of her tears, some water, and candles in case she woke during the night. Then he returned, kicking off his boots, unbuckling the worn leather straps from around his waist and thigh in order to set the machete down next to them, and lowering himself gingerly to the bed he wasn't actually positive would hold his weight – it did. Gathering her warm weight against his body, he adjusted the blanket so that it covered her bare feet, and sank back against the wall with a silent sigh.

When dawn had come this morning he had not, in any sense, expected the day to end this way. He had not expected to see her again, much less feel her slow, steady breathing under his hand at her back. Yet here she was. Much to his shock, and his wonder.

She slept all through the night and well into morning, shifting only a few times to unfold her limbs or nestle her head deeper against the plain of his chest. He had no idea how it could be as comfortable as it seemed to be for her, but it didn't matter how so long as it was. It meant that he could hold her – spend hours doing so, soaking in the scent and warmth of her. He was quite sure he could happily spend days doing just that. Eventually he would prefer her to be awake, but for the moment there was nothing he wanted more.

When she finally woke it was with a dry throat and an apology. Very like her, he noted fondly, to fuss about being an inconvenience when she was anything but. Tolerating her fretting he pressed her to drink and to eat, pleased when she did so without protest – though he had been resolved to make her if she proved obstinate.

He had almost managed to forget the reason for her tears the night before, and thus the ultimate reason they were in this room on this bed. Being so occupied with caring for her had almost been enough to banish it from his mind. Almost. Until her mention of it brought back every twinge and stab of horror and guilt and despair.

Unlike the night before, his reaction was not lost amidst the violence of her grief. She was alert to it almost immediately and was shockingly quick to absolve him of blame.

"Please don't punish yourself for this," she pleaded, her hand small and cool where it curled around his own.

Maybe she was right, and even if he was at fault that she might be too. Maybe he wasn't solely responsible for this awful thing. She didn't think so, and _that_ he believed. He believed her reassurances now as he assuredly would _not_ have before, purely for the fact that her having returned was proof enough that even if she held a fraction of a grudge it was not enough to keep her from him. He wished it were quite so easy to fully believe it of himself, to wash himself clean of the guilt she wanted him to shed. He would have for her, but he didn't know how. Blame seemed embedded in the fibers of his very being.

She told him details of how she had come to be there: on his land. Things about her mother, beautiful, and bittersweet. The ache in her voice was an old one, comfortable in a way only frequency and long suffering brought. There was relief in her too, he noticed, for someone beloved no longer in pain, as if her mother having left the world behind allowed Whitney to finally begin to heal the wound festering in the face of the sickness. It was not something he could directly relate to, but he could understand it. And was glad of it.

She told him about the life she had left, whittled down and scraped to the bare bone. A matter of survival as he had never quite thought of it, but that he felt to his core.

"I have to start over," she had said, a weary note to the words. And then, far more softly: "my life is here now. With you."

His eyes jumped to her face, shocked, because _surely_ he had misheard.

She wasn't looking at him, but rather down at their hands where she was trailing her fingertips down the inside of his hand. She looked uncertain…shy.

"If you want."

He reached for her, unoccupied hand wrapping about the nape of her neck to pull her face to his until her brow rested against the farce of his face and he squeezed his eyes shut, loathing that he could not feel her skin. He felt her lift her arms, felt the faint pressure as she cradled his head between her fine, small hands and touched her lips to the shielded mouth-space of his mask.

He felt her heat through the fiberglass, her breath against his mangled lips, and she might as well have shoved her hand into his chest – slipped it right between his ribs and taken his beating heart between her fingers.

She lowered her face to his neck, her nose cool against his skin before she buried it in his shirt collar.

He was vaguely aware of her speaking, though he couldn't hear for the faint ringing in his ears. A moment later she was moving, twisting as if uncomfortable. He blinked, and they were face to face, her hips pressing into his stomach – sharp bones and soft flesh and heat. The pattern of her breath changed, became just faintly shallower, high in her throat. Then she was slipping away, climbing somewhat awkwardly over his leg to stand up. He assumed she must need something and had gotten up to retrieve it, but for the space of a moment she simply stood there, looking at him as if deliberating.

It would have been a lie to claim he felt no hint of worry under that look. It was a thing bordered on indecision and he knew it had something to do with him. Still, he remained where he was and waited.

What followed caught him completely by surprise.

There was a tiny row of buttons at the front of her shirt, a detail long ago noticed but never really considered until now, as her slender fingers began working them free. The movement drew his gaze automatically and once there, he found himself snared, his eyes locked to the inches of skin bared in the wake of those buttons, the shadowed line framed by the parting fabric.

Her hands lowered, folding around the bottom of the shirt and sliding it up, and he watched – enthralled – as a smooth abdomen was revealed, sleek muscle and soft flesh under skin pale as milk. She pulled the clothing over her head, causing her hair to tumble down around her shoulders in loose waves. The color was dark in the early dawn light, the red reduced to a low smolder like banked coals. He could finally fully see the wire-framed garment that strapped around her ribs, a muted beige-brown shade like the inside of a hazelnut against her skin. It perfectly hugged the swell of her breasts, and he wondered now if that was its purpose.

Heat was creeping along his skin. He had no conscious knowledge of moving, but he realized he had shifted enough to plant one foot on the floor, trying, he suspected, to brace himself against falling (fall where he wasn't sure) – something he was glad of when she lifted her hands to the top band of her denim pants, pulling the closures open.

His pulse quickened, his mouth suddenly dry as bark.

She folded the cloth down her hips, revealing a pair of black underthings. True, he hadn't been able to see as well as he would have liked, but these seemed to fit her better than the blue had, and something about the stark contrast between them and her skin was far more striking. She pushed until the denim slid the rest of the way on its own, unveiling the length of her legs. Familiar, but still so damn beautiful.

He hated that he couldn't tell her. How beautiful she was. Girls – _women_ like her deserved to hear it, to have it repeated over and over, breathed like prayer into their ears.

Delicate as a bird she stepped from the pool of fabric at her feet, nudging it aside with her toes. Her elbows bent, reaching behind her own back to reach something, and he heard a tiny plastic snap as though something had broken. The elastic straps of the wired garment slid down over the slopes of her shoulders.

Had his heart stopped beating? He wasn't sure, and he didn't care.

She placed a hand over the thing as if holding it in place, just for a moment. Then she let it drop, sliding down her arms to the floor.

He was gaping, his eyes wide and his mouth open – hidden, thank goodness, by the mask.

Hers didn't look all that different from the other female bodies he had seen, not that he'd ever really taken a great deal of time to study them. He'd spent more hours obsessively absorbing the pieces of her he could see than any of the fully naked women that had crossed his path before: the slender arch of her neck, the length of graceful arms, the way the soft slopes of her calves curved into delicate ankles. That alone should have warned him that even the elements of sameness would be in no way the same.

He had never looked at the dip of a woman's waist and wanted to lay his hand there to feel how soft she was. Not before her. He had never seen the arc of a hipbone and wanted to follow it with his fingertips, or trace the natural line that fell from the hollow of the throat down between the breasts. He had never wondered what a woman's skin would feel like next to his. Never wanted to touch anyone so badly that not to was an agony. The way he wanted to touch her, taste her, enfold himself around her. He didn't even know what precisely it was he wanted. Just… _her._ Whatever she wanted. Whatever she would allow.

When she tucked her fingers beneath the hem of her underthings he felt the heat curl, the low, searing grip of hunger tight and thick in the pit of his stomach. She slipped them down from her hips much the same way she had her jeans, until she was left standing before him, completely bare and utterly breathtaking.

She let him look for a moment, chewing maybe a little anxiously at her lower lip, before she stepped toward him.

His inhale was sharp as a knife slicing down his throat when she lowered herself to perch on the edge of the bed next to him, her knee close enough to graze his thigh. The warmth of her seemed to scald straight through his trousers. A chilled sweat had risen along his spine, and suddenly he didn't know where to look. The only reason he saw her lips curve with the smile was because his eyes had darted nervously upward, seeking somewhere safe.

Her hand found his arm, pulling lightly at his sleeve. His skin prickled at the touch.

"Your turn."

~/~

She was not the first woman he'd seen, but she was the first to matter. He needed no words to tell her that.

It was the only time she had been in this specific kind of situation and had not even a fleeting thought about her not entirely perfect figure: the extra softness framing the curve of her belly, the angular boniness of her joints, the faint iridescent streaks of the stretch marks across her thighs and hips from growing too much too fast as a pre-teen. Not a single one. She might know logically that the flaws she saw in the mirror were nowhere near as noticeable or severe to any eyes but her own, and that most men didn't give a damn about flaws when they were just happy to have a chance to look at a naked girl. But sometimes it took seeing that lack of notice in order to believe it herself. Oddly, wonderfully, enough, at no point in her little impromptu strip tease did she suffer insecurity of any kind.

He took in every inch of skin she gave him with the relish of a man starved. By the time she got to her panties he looked like he was going to pass out, and holy crap did it make her feel desirable beyond reason.

She moved back to the bed, unsurprised when he went rigid at the brush of her knee. He sat stiffly, his usual measured poise gone stilted and awkward, his hands clasping and unclasping where they rested atop the sheets at his sides. He shifted, restless, yet he made no move to touch her as she was fairly certain he wanted to.

Laying a hand on his arm, she bid him to turn slightly so that he faced her, and tugged gently at his sleeve.

"Your turn," she teased, hoping to ease some of his tension.

He met her gaze, a flicker of cautious comprehension in his eyes. Slowly, he lifted his hands from the bed, holding mask in place and reaching behind his neck to pull his shirt over his head. He clutched it between his hands, twisting the cloth once, twice, before setting it carefully aside. His fingers flexed, grazing the edge of his waistband and her stomach fluttered, at once excitement and nerves and elation – but it was as if the longer she looked, the more insecure he became. Though all he did was lower his hand back to the bed, he seemed almost to fold in on himself like the boy he'd never had the freedom to be.

It was possible that he might have been too caught up in the moment to feel it before, but he seemed all too aware of his own inexperience just now. That, or…was it doubt?

She might have been baffled at how he could question her attraction to him by now had she not possessed the knowledge she did of his background. Years upon years being told that he was ugly and freakish could not be smoothed away immediately, not even by her. It would take determination, and time.

Both of which she possessed plenty of.

Rising up on her knees, she moved closer until she was pressing against his thigh, setting her palms along the solid arc of his collarbone. Doing so brought her arms in, pressed her breasts together, and she experienced a swift, shivery pang of delight when his eyes dropped to them briefly before he dragged his stare resolutely back up to her face.

"Touch me," she invited, partly because she guessed the direction would steady him, but mostly because her skin felt tight and feverish and she wanted him to put his hands on her.

To her relief, it worked.

She was hardly a dainty waif of a girl, but when he took her waist between both hands it felt as if he enclosed it completely. He didn't, at least not quite, but it _felt_ that way. He surrounded her, overwhelmed her. It was exactly she wanted, yet nowhere near enough.

The edges of his thumbs skimmed down, pausing over the slight indentation of her navel and bringing a soft shiver to arrow down her spine. There was wonder in his touch, as if he were feeling the fabric of the universe, not just the skin of a girl he'd only known a few weeks. Yet there was familiarity too, a kind of knowing next to the newness. Comfort, _safety_. He might be uncertain, but he felt safe with her in the same ways she felt safe with him. She had never known a man who had any concept of how vital that was.

He shifted, angling his body more directly into hers. Yet he still seemed tentative, so when she felt the gentle pressure at her sternum, the heat of his palm urging her backward, she blinked at him, surprised.

He pressed again – a question. A request. He wanted her to lie down.

She obeyed, intrigued and delighted by this completely unprompted action; something that had occurred to him organically and that he'd wanted enough to ask for. Unfolding her legs, she settled back onto the slightly too-soft mattress, stretching an arm up over her head in effort to remind herself to relax even as her stomach fluttered with eager anticipation when he shifted to lean over her.

His hand slipped up, loosely circling her throat. Not in a way that might suggest he pictured squeezing, but as if he were admiring something he thought beautiful. She detected a sense of deliberate care to his manner that she suspected was in effort not to startle her, rather than simply his own trepidation. Even though she had been the one to assault him first – both times. It was sweet, and she felt her cheeks warm slightly with a flush of pleasure she couldn't hide if she'd wanted to. She knew he could see it and reveled in that, hoping he recognized it for the compliment it was.

Fingertips grazed her chin, her mouth. The pad of his thumb brushed her lower lip, following the shape of it, pressing gently. It was an automatic thing to let her lips part, realizing only after she did that this was what he'd wanted. Goodness, he really _did_ like her mouth.

She didn't know why this affected her so much, she really didn't. But there was no mistaking the liquid pool of want in her belly, or the restless craving for friction which had her squeezing her thighs together.

She had the most wicked impulse to lick his finger, but she suppressed it, not wanting to interrupt him.

His touch slipped lower, down between her collarbones, so light and soft that it nearly brought her goosebumps. Ever so carefully he followed the dip and swell of her left breast, grazing the nipple, and she was absolutely _not_ in control when her spine arched. She thought it might startle him, but he seemed more curious than alarmed. He repeated the touch, with intent this time, letting it linger. The rasp of callus at his fingertips against her was nothing short of delicious and she whimpered, her hand curling into the sheet above her head.

He was growing braver with every second, every breath. When his touch traveled across her sternum to her other breast it was with much more surety. His hand curved with the shape, not quite cupping the weight of her, watching with open, burning fascination as he teased the tip to a stiff point. The muscles between her thighs clenched, hot and needy. She squirmed, thighs parting reflexively. Another involuntary noise formed in her mouth, and no sooner had the sound left her then his eyes were there, absorbing the look on her face, the arch of her neck when he ran his thumb over the tight nipple so slowly that she felt the ache echo deep in her cunt.

He was so _focused_. She wasn't used to this level of intensity and was somewhat taken aback by what an incredible turn-on it was. Though it really shouldn't have surprised her.

She missed it instantly when he left her breast, his palm smoothing softly along her ribs and the slight slope of her stomach. He traced the faint remnant of the bruise at her hip. Apologetic, regretful, but he didn't flinch or recoil from it, for which she was grateful.

He bypassed the place she wanted him the most in order to stroke down the slope of her thigh. The touch was tender, impossible to mistake as anything but loving, for all that his eyes were searing. He seemed to relish the feel of her, running his hand along her shape as though feeling something rich and lustrous like velvet.

Then, palm tilting upward, he brought his touch to the slick heat of her, fingers sliding just the way she'd shown him to part the outer folds.

" _Huhhn_ …"

The moan caught in her throat, her back curving helplessly at the sharp, sweet throb in her flesh. She spread her legs a little wider, knowing he was studying her as he hadn't been able to before, and somehow knowing it caused her eyelids to flutter.

He dragged his fingertips up, grazing her clit, and she was completely unable to stop the involuntary rock of her hips at the bust of pleasure, or the choked gasping whine from spilling out of her mouth. It was almost embarrassing – might have been, in fact, had he been anyone else and had she not been tipped so deep into her own sensory overload that she could no longer care.

Christ on a goddamn _cracker_ _._

She had only ever felt this good when she had touched herself. It would not have been a lie to say she was somewhat alarmed by it.

He took note of the reaction, and immediately turned his attention to the tight, throbbing spot. And thank god for a man attentive and determined enough to realize the clitoris was their key to a happy woman. He followed her every sound, every infinitesimal hint of movement like a map – attuned to the subtle inflections which told him what things were good and which were _very_ good.

She writhed, gasping, one hand tangling in sheeting. The other found his thigh and her fingers bent, nearly clawing at him in effort to gain some kind of purchase upon the rough cloth of his pant leg.

He'd stopped exploring. She didn't doubt he was enjoying himself, simply from the way he touched her she could tell he wasn't simply doing what he thought he was supposed to, or just to get on with it and hasten to move onward. There was a genuine relish there, as if he derived pleasure directly through hers, and it was sexy as _fuck_. But even dazed and half-mindless as she was, she understood what he might not completely be aware of. It was easier to focus on her, less uncertain. More controlled. It allowed him to not dwell on whatever it was that had made him nervous and strained before she'd given him something else to focus on. She thought she might understand, and while it worried her a little bit, she was completely beyond the ability to think rationally.

Not when he seemed determined to one-up his own record of giving her the best orgasm of her life.

She lingered on the precipice for long, agonizing minutes, never quite able to reach it...and she couldn't be sure he wasn't doing it on purpose, drawing out the pleasure until she was a shuddering, desperate mess. It might have seemed too early to give him that much credit, but it sure as heck didn't feel that way. She was nearly panting by the time she reached the cliff and fell.

It wasn't as intense as the last – a gradual, rolling tidal wave rather than a brutal snap – and not quite so emotionally charged. But it was long and luscious and flooded her with such ethereal bliss, and _fucking hell_ she was going to get those goddamn pants off if it was the _last thing_ she did.

~/~

To say Jason didn't understand why he was so apprehensive would have been an untruth in the absolute.

He should have been thrilled at the prospect of repeating any part of the activity of two nights ago, should have been thoroughly absorbed in the lovely creature settled beside him in nothing but her skin. And he was, truly. But he was also, inexplicably, afraid.

The way she looked at him when he pulled the clean shirt from his body...he almost couldn't believe how he'd missed it before. But then he was still having difficulty believing this was real and not simply a fragment of imagination tangled in desire. But it must have been, because there she was, trailing her eyes over his torso as though there was nothing she would rather be looking at.

She wanted him to copy her, to rid himself completely of clothing as she had done, but he didn't dare. He was already becoming tight and hot, and as good as it had felt when she had touched him, he was incredibly nervous for reasons he could not piece together with any sense of coherency – a convoluted tangle of _private_ and _dangerous_ and _strange_.

He wanted desperately to touch her. The urge was a dull ache in his hands, gnawing in his gut. Yet he hesitated.

It wasn't that he sought permission – she had said he didn't need it. No, it was something else. Quite simply, he didn't know what to do. She seemed to want something very specific but he had no idea what, and he was so afraid of making a mistake, of committing some error in his ignorance. He wanted her to stay with him, wanted to please her, to make her happy…but he was at a total loss as to how and crippled by the terror in not knowing.

He had never been more relieved than when she took pity on him, sliding close, enveloping him in the clean, sweet scent of her, and _told_ him.

"Touch me."

Vague as it might have seemed, something in him loosened, relaxed.

His hands came up, circling her waist – the narrow point between the flare of hips and the swell of breasts. He could reach all of her like this, feel every line and curve. But he wanted to look at her too, and the best way he could think of to have both was for her to lie back.

She seemed surprised by the guiding hand he laid against her, spanning across delicate collarbones, yet she relented almost immediately, unfolding the length of her sleek, beautiful body along the pale gray sheets. She lifted one arm above her head, the position inadvertently thrusting her breasts upward.

His groin tightened.

He felt for the bloodbeat in her throat, tracing the lines up to her face. The place at her jaw where the stranger had struck her was still a bit red, probably still a bit tender as well, but they had thankfully kept it from swelling. Good. He turned his attention back to the stubborn little chin, the lush mouth.

Why he wanted her to part her lips was beyond him, but he did, and took an oddly violent satisfaction when she responded perfectly to the subtle pressure he'd exerted. The way her lashes lowered slightly, as if to say _she_ knew _exactly_ why he wanted it even if he did not, sent a lick of fire down his spine. With effort, he dragged his gaze, and his touch, lower.

He had seen bare breasts often enough that they had ceased to be strange or novel. He knew how they looked, the structure, the way they moved. But none of them had belonged to her, and he found himself gaping as he had when she had let the wire-elastic cage fall away and revealed what lay beneath.

Her skin was such a precise shade of cream, pale and almost luminous in the right light. It was the same here but for the very tips, where the color was the same wild rose pink as her lips. He let his fingertips skim down the soft flesh, pleasantly surprised when her back curved, pressing herself into his touch. It was so uncontrolled, a reflex driven by pure pleasure and seemingly anchored in that pretty pink center.

To his fascination, when he touched her again it was to find the flesh tightening beneath his fingers. He repeated the action with the other breast, at which she shifted, making a small sound in her throat like an echo of discomfort, and he worried briefly that he was causing pain.

He glanced up at her, and the sight of her – the look on her face – was indescribable.

Her eyes were glazed, her hair spread like mahogany made liquid about her head. The arm that had rested so serene and relaxed above her was tight with strain, her fingers tangled in the sheet beneath her. He could _smell_ her, the salty-sweetness that he now understood came in tandem with the dampness he would likely find between the thighs she was pressing together as if to satisfy a need for touch.

 _His_ touch.

Quite deliberately he dragged a fingertip across the beaded point, his insides clenching with hot, savage delight when she squirmed and arched her neck, biting at her lower lip.

The rest of his study was somewhat feverish, though he did pause at her hip, studying the bruising there with a regretful frown. Hurting her was the last thing he wanted – something which she seemed to know, thankfully. Still, he resolved to be more careful, and though he knew she wouldn't feel the vow in the caress of her thigh, he hoped she would understand on some level that he would never bruise her again.

His eyes lowered, settled on the short, tidy gathering of dark hair at the apex of her thighs – another thing seen before but dismissed before he could ever become truly curious. He had felt it when he'd touched her before, ever so slightly coarse but also strangely pleasant.

As before, looking at her here tapped into some part of him based purely in things deep and powerful and _demanding_. The reddish curls glistened, and the sight of it cut his breath short and turned the blood in his veins white-hot. Instinct guided the curve of his fingers, delving into the soft, slick heat, the scent of her thick in his lungs. The instant he touched her she rewarded him with a breathy, almost keening sound and widened the part of her legs as if to grant better access. He took greedy advantage, angling his head to study the sweet, warm place.

He had thought his own anatomy strange, but hers was so much more intricate and fascinating. The soft folds of flesh almost resembled a flower in terms of shape and texture, and yet not at all. Flowers were pretty enough, but they didn't make his body ache and burn, nor incite such an urgent craving to be closer.

Tracing his fingertips along the length of the petal-like folds he grazed something that had Whitney's spine arching sharply, her hips rolling almost helplessly up against his hand. She made a strangled, desperate sound deep in her throat that he felt reverberate all the way down to his toes. He needed no more than that to tell him this place was one to study as thoroughly as possible.

He probed gently, finding a tight bud tucked within the flesh, the texture similar to that of the tips of her breasts but not quite the same. From the way the lean muscles in her thighs strained and her breath left her in something edged upon a whine, this was the source of the response, and he set himself to producing it again.

He paid close attention to every sound she made, every twitch, every hint of movement no matter how subtle, until he had gathered enough information to know that slow strokes drew languid shudders and that tight, focused circles caused her to twist and arch and gasp almost frantically. Her head tossed to one side as she pressed her hips into his touch. He felt her hand at his leg, her nails raking down the length of his thigh. Her eyes were half-lidded and hazed as though delirious, her lips parted and the rise and fall of her chest gone rapid and shallow with her breath.

The tightness of his trousers was past the point of discomfort now and his mouth was watering as if in response to a ravenous appetite, which…in truth felt an accurate description. He might as well have been devouring her: savoring the soft, pleading sounds spilling from her tongue, the delicate tremble in her thighs, the slickness of her pleasure, the way she bent her knee slightly to change the angle of his fingers and her soft cry when he took heed of it.

He could see it build this time – saw it in the almost pained set of her features, the unsteady, urgent arch of her body, felt the throbbing pulse like the contraction of a heartbeat centered between her thighs as she shook and gasped, and broke upon a rush of liquid fire.

Killing had never given him power. Not really, and certainly _not_ like this. Death was simply a price to be paid, a debt owed of which he was merely the collector. It was satisfying in its way, but emptily so. The sense of triumph that overcame him when she sagged, limp and trembling, the satisfaction, the _power_ …it was like nothing he had ever known.

If the rest of his life was occupied with nothing but the pursuit of bringing her pleasure like this, it would be a life well and fully spent.

~/~

For a minute or so she couldn't really move. Either her abdominal muscles had revolted or she had forgotten how to use them, which was really fine by her. She spent the time riding out the ebbing spasms, and looking at him, trailing her eyes along the heavy muscle of his arms and shoulders, somewhat hypnotized by the gleam at his chest and the hollow of his throat – still stunned she had the ability to bring him to the point of perspiring.

Jason, for his part, was currently examining his own hand, absently rubbing his fingers together.

She hovered on the edge of mortification for a moment when she realized it was the hand he had touched her with and that he must be studying the texture of the wetness from her body. But he looked rather captivated by it, pleased even, instead of baffled or disgusted, and her mortification leaned toward a shy kind of relief.

Her palm was still resting upon his leg and she let it stroke down toward the knee in a gesture of affection, somewhat surprised to find she hadn't gouged furrows in the thick fabric. At her touch his eyes moved back to her, soft and bright on her face. He reached, great hand curving with the slope of her hip…and he hadn't wiped his hand clean. It didn't occur to him that he should, because it wasn't gross or unclean to him – he'd had far worse things on his hands, after all. It was at once sweetly endearing and unexpectedly sexy.

He mirrored her affectionate touch by running his hand up along her waist and ribs, the unhurried caress drawing a faint, echoing pang of pleasure from between her legs.

With a steadying breath she managed to coax her body to sit up. She wobbled a little, and Jason's hand curved automatically to support her back. Was that a worry frown clouding his eyes? Sweet man. He hadn't yet figured out that being a bit unsteady was to be expected.

But he would.

She let her hand slide slowly up the length of his thigh, turning her wrist to direct it ever so slightly inward. The muscle coiling tightly beneath her palm, the touch at her back flexing compulsively.

Discreetly she glanced toward his groin and experienced another reflexive, fluttering clench in her belly at the impressive signs of strain beneath the thick dark cloth. How she wanted it out of the way. Badly enough that she felt her fingers twitch. But she had not forgotten his reluctance earlier, and that alone was enough to cement her decision.

She wouldn't do it for him. She would affirm and encourage, but he had to make the choice for himself. He had to _want_ to do it, otherwise it would be coerced and she was very much _not_ in favor of that – and honestly, it was fine if he wasn't there yet. More than fine. Nothing was stopping her from repeating what she'd done last time, plus without the restriction of the chair she had more freedom, and more reach.

By then she had regained enough core stability to tuck her knees under her and she did so, angling her body so she was facing him directly. Bracing her hands upon his chest she leaned forward, brushing her lips across the hollow of his throat.

He sucked in a hard breath, his chest swelling as it filled his lungs. Her palms curved with the shape of his pectorals, firm and solid, the pound of his heart like thunder. She nuzzled her nose against the base of his neck, both affectionate and – or so she hoped – soothing, then she kissed him, pressing her mouth to the thick arc of muscle connecting neck to shoulder. She traced the shape of him with her lips, with slow, open-mouthed kisses – tasting the salt of his skin and breathing in the heady, musky scent of him.

He was fighting (and failing) to keep his breaths even. Each one left him shaking, a faint tremor she felt in his hand at her back and the obliques strained tight under her fingertips. He hadn't been half so responsive when she had touched him before. She wasn't sure if that was because he hadn't realized what she was doing or because she was using her mouth – or both – but she liked it; the soft shudder that rippled through him every time she slid her hands across his skin, the way his hand flexed when she let her lips drag to a new spot instead of lifting her mouth.

Her fingertips slipped upward along his ribs, inadvertently brushing one nipple, and he released a heavy huff of an exhale, powerful stomach muscles contracting. Intrigued, she drew back to look at him. Overall he was rather pale, though not quite as white as she was (thank you pasty Scottish ancestors), yet his nipples were a soft, dusky brownish pink.

With a smile that might have been just a bit wicked, she ducked her head and swiped her tongue across one.

He emitted a harsh grunt of surprise. His hand flew to her nape, coiling in her hair and clenching into a fist before suddenly releasing as if burned.

She went still, frowning. She couldn't tell if that had been a good reaction or a bad one – if he had been encouraging or redirecting her. The only thing she was certain of was why he'd stopped, and it was because he was _way_ too worried about hurting her.

And Clay had been so adamant that she couldn't know that she was truly safe with him. She had never been more safe.

If she had to choose, she would rather a man be too gentle than too rough with her, especially one quite so strong. But she wasn't glass. She wasn't hollow-boned and paper-skinned and she didn't want him to be consumed with caution, to treat her like she would shatter instantly if he gripped a little harder. She didn't believe for one second that if she had drawn his attention to the bruising grip he wouldn't have let up immediately – that he wouldn't have ripped himself from the brink of release to do so. He wasn't going to break her now.

Drawing back, she reached for his hand where it rested just a bit too lightly at the back of her neck. Folding her fingers around his she twined them into her hair and softly pulled.

His eyes narrowed on her face, sharp as a hawk's.

"You won't hurt me," she told him patiently. Adjusting her grip around his hand she pulled a little more firmly, enough to force her own head back, exposing her throat while he watched closely, processing. "I'll tell you if I don't like something," she added, turning her hand to slip it free. "Just like you'll tell me, right?"

Though he didn't nod for her, something in his gaze told her she had told him what he needed to hear.

"So did you want me to stop, or keep going?"

It was an opening. He could choose to answer the way he usually did when she issued an either/or question, holding up a finger to indicate which was the correct one, which was what she thought he would do. When she felt the light pressure at the base of her skull it was with pleasant surprise.

He used no more force than that, and she understanding that they had a ways to go before he would be able or willing to direct her more assertively. Which was completely fine. She didn't need much direction in this case.

Leaning back into him, she pressed her lips to his skin an inch or so above the place she knew he wanted her. Then an inch below, teasing by mouthing at the ridge of muscle lining the protrusion of a rib. He let out a short breath of frustration, arching toward her as if in unspoken plea, and she relented. She brushed her lips across the nipple, tracing the shape with the tip of her tongue until he stiffened and his fingers curled tightly amidst her hair. She felt the vibration of the groan, centered deep behind the solar plexus and radiating into her palms where she gripped his waist, rich and wonderful in spite of its silence.

Then, abruptly, he leaned away from her, pushing up off the bed so swiftly that she nearly tipped sideways onto the floor and had to catch herself with a hand.

She peered up at him, more than a little startled.

"I'm—" she began, reflexive apology halfway out of her mouth when she realized two things. First, that he was breathing heavily, but in the way of exertion, not of fear. And second, that he was reaching for his fly.

 _Yes. Yes, yes,_ please _yes._

Her stomach twisted, the butterflies alight with a sudden flurry of elated trepidation as she watched him.

He was frowning slightly, having to concentrate on the zipper to counter the tremble in his hands. It was sweet, all that fierce focus in order to accomplish such a small task. He paused part of the way through – his gaze darting swiftly to her as though the earlier uncertainty had creeped back to sink its teeth into him. She was prepared to reassure him, though the reveal of those extra inches of taut flesh below his navel were doing a number on her concentration, but evidently he didn't need her to.

Heavy ribcage expanding with a breath he seemed to brace himself. Then he tucked his thumbs under the band and shoved the fabric down.

She was not expecting the lack of underwear, though perhaps she should have – clothing big enough to fit his frame must have been difficult to come by. Still, she had not been prepared to suddenly see so much of him so fast. Her eyes widened, the flush at her cheeks deepening to the point where she could feel it spreading down her neck and chest as she took in the solid flanks and powerful thighs, the faint line of pale hair leading down to the thick jut of his cock.

He was...well, he was proportional. Which meant, like every other, this part of him was rather larger than average. She stared, trying to calculate. She'd only been intimate with two other men and neither of them had been quite so...intimidating.

"Ok," she murmured, more a textured exhale than an actual word.

Contrary to popular (for whatever reason) belief, size did, in fact, matter. But not in the way everyone seemed to think. It wasn't a matter of girth, but rather of length. A woman's body could not simply expand itself to adjust to the size of its male partner; there was a definite ending point in the form of the cervix which _did not_ appreciate being intruded upon in 99.7% of cases. Or so said everything she'd ever read. And believed, if her pelvic exams were any indication.

It was very likely – and probably more along the lines of definitely – that Jason was simply too long for her. At least for certain things. But that just meant she would have to be creative.

As a rule, penises were not pretty. They were appendages of purpose, not aesthetic, and while there were certainly women in the world who claimed to love the look of them, Whitney was not one of them. Thus it was with no small measure of surprise that she took one look at Jason's and thought it…while not _pretty,_ definitely more appealing than average. Perhaps it was that his hair was so pale and fine, lending an almost automatic appearance of tidiness – which was ironic considering she had once mentally insulted his apparent lack of care for things like grooming (wrongly so at that). Maybe it was the shape of it, the almost elegant curve. Or maybe it was simply that she was so _ridiculously_ attracted to him and that he was obviously just as attracted to her.

Tentatively she reached, giving him every opportunity to step back – to deflect or turn away. But he didn't, and she took him gently in hand.

He wasn't absurd, but the space between her fingertips was much less than she remembered from the last time she'd had her hand on someone's cock. He was also incredibly warm: the skin smooth and velvety-soft. She might have imagined she could feel the throb of his pulse against her palm, but she did not imagine the ruddy flush at the tip, nor the bead of moisture there.

The second she touched him he jumped as though electrocuted, seizing her wrist in a grip just a little too tight for comfort before quickly correcting it. When she glanced up to meet his gaze it was to find his pupils blown wide and just the tiniest bit of alarm.

"I'll stop if you want me to," she said, deliberately projecting a calm she didn't entirely feel, and a reassurance she did.

He hesitated, but she understood the hitch in the shake of his head. This was new and he was nervous, which was absolutely to be expected. Though he was not ashamed, she was pleased to note, or else he was hiding it incredibly well – which she frankly doubted.

Though he had let go of her wrist, she waited a moment before moving, just in case. When he didn't stop her, she stroked down his length, relishing the sharp, uncontrollable jerk of his hips and the choked sound lodged in his throat.

Releasing him, she slid backward across the bed and held her hand out to him.

"Come here?"

She phrased it as a question so he understood he had the option to refuse her, but he didn't seem inclined to. He moved forward, the muscle in his long legs bunching as he struggled to shove the socks from his feet by stepping on them much the way she did when she was tired, or in a hurry. She didn't suppress her smile.

The grace that had briefly left him before returned out of nowhere. He sank almost panther-like to the bed as it dipped beneath his weight, the box-spring giving a faint whine that went completely ignored. She wondered vaguely if some of the nerves had been more a result of simply not knowing what to expect, either from her or himself, and that with her approval made evident they ceased to be a problem. Either way, he had risen up on his knees to mirror her, broad and scarred and imposing.

He reached for her, his arm winding about her waist and pulling her across the bed toward him.

She heard felt his breath stutter at the contact – at her skin on his – and tipped her chin up to see his eyes were dark and fever-bright.

Though she trusted him completely, she wasn't sure she would ever completely be rid of the small creature acknowledgement of just how easily he _could_ hurt her if he chose to. It might no longer manifest as alarm, but it was there. It was there now as he lifted her bodily against him as easily as if she were a child, rendering her small and dainty and starkly, blatantly female next to his size and bearing. Once it would have frightened her to be those things with him. Now it just made her hot.

His hand rested low across her back, holding her close so that her breasts brushed his chest and the length of him was trapped, hard and searing against her belly. Her insides shuddered, new heat pooling slick between her legs, responding on a purely physical level to what the primordial center of her brain recognized as a strong, capable, virile male to whom she should submit _immediately_.

He had put them back in the position they'd been in before he had suddenly decided to rid himself of pants – probably due to the discomfort – and she wasn't sure if it was because he didn't know what else to do or because he wanted her to continue where she had left off. She was hoping for the latter.

She ran her hands up the dip and swell of his biceps and along his shoulders, cradling the base of his head between them. She leaned forward, using his body as leverage and arching her back slightly to reach that tender little place at the back of his jaw. Her lips parted, her breath a light brush across his skin for an instant preceding the touch of her mouth. She kissed softly, dragging her lips up to the lobe of his ear and giving it a playful lick.

Something rather like a growl rumbled through his chest – a low, soundless vibration. In another creature she would have thought it a warning, but not in him. Not when he had just lowered his hand to the curve of her ass and pressed her closer, his palm and fingers splayed wide across her flesh.

 _Oh, jesus,_ yes.

She kissed a path down the side of his neck, following the path of his pulse. Then, curious to see if the affect would be similar, she retraced the line she had made with the tip of her tongue – a long, delicate lick. His spine curved, hips arcing in blind reflex up against her stomach. His grip on her butt tightened when he did, inadvertently pressing her down so that the base of his cock dragged across the soft rise directly over her cunt.

Oh, _god_ she wanted him inside her.

But that was not going to happen. For one, she was nowhere near prepared enough for that. She hadn't had so much as a finger for over a month and he was thick enough that she would need warming up. For another, she was not so far lost to her lust that she couldn't remember that if he bled, and if he ejaculated, then he was alive enough that there was a chance – if maybe an infinitesimal one – that he could impregnate her, and no matter how small that wasn't a chance she was able to take. She'd gotten the condoms specifically for this reason...which were, of _fucking_ course, all the way downstairs.

Sharp noise of frustration in her mouth, she planted her hands against his chest and pushed at him until he got the signal and adjusted, unfolding his legs so she could straddle his thighs, and pushing again until he dropped to his back.

If she had known nothing of Jason beyond his size, his strength, and his capacity for violence, she would have assumed any inclination he had toward sex would be anything but submissive. Yet he seemed quite content to follow her lead. Eager, even, like a puppy paying close attention to the new commands being taught him, as though he were trying to commit whatever she did to memory.

Though it was a bit difficult to think of him as a puppy in this particular setting.

He lay there beneath her, all firm, rough muscle and aroused male flesh, one hand sliding along the dip of her waist down to her hip as though he couldn't quite restrain himself from touching her.

Holy shit, but he was a beautiful man.

Bracing her palm against the rigid surface of his abdomen she wrapped her hand around the base of his erection and ran her thumb down the thick vein along the underside. The muscle under her hand clenched, his cock throbbing in her grip. He shuddered and strained, tension cording in his neck and shoulders. He wasn't going to last very long, which was to be expected. It was one thing to feel her through fabric, but to have her hand on him was likely far more intense.

She stroked him gently, and then again a little more firmly when he thrust up into her hand with a reflexive roll of his hips. He shifted restlessly, thighs flexing between hers. She circled the flushed head with her fingertips, spreading the pearly moisture at his tip with her thumb, and he nearly arched off the bed, a harsh, prolonged breath that she knew to be a moan slipping from his mask.

His grip had slipped to a point high at her thigh, somehow maintaining the presence of mind to keep his fingers splayed and the pressure measured. She suspected he was trying to channel most of the force to the other hand, which was clutching the edge of the mattress, digging so deep that she would be shocked if the imprints ever completely went away. Still, the purchase he had on her was not insignificant – pulling her a fraction of an inch closer to him as though on some instinctive compulsion to feel the heat of her cunt on him. She was sorely tempted to oblige that compulsion, tip her hips forward and drag his length against her.

Her belly clenched, the muscles tightening greedily, liquid and shivering and alarmingly strong.

That was…new. She couldn't remember ever feeling this level of arousal again so quickly. She tended to need quite a bit of time before it was possible for her to orgasm again rather than just feel overstimulated and uncomfortable. She wasn't actually sure if that was what this was, but she was more than willing to go with it. Not, however, at the expense of potentially putting him in cardiac arrest. So she kept her hips to herself, challenging as that was, and made do with her hands.

He was shaking – literally _shaking_ – the rise and fall of his chest rapid, almost frantic, so close to the brink that it was almost painful to watch. And then his back bowed, his entire body coiling with a glorious tension as the pleasure tore and bled. He pulsed in her grasp, spilling in a hot rush across his own heaving stomach, the back of her hand.

This time the engulfing sense of delicious victory was not impeded by her terror of having assaulted him against his will.

Oh, she'd assaulted him all right.

But he had been absolutely and thoroughly willing.

~/~

She looked different after, mussed and rosy. She nearly seemed to glow, though he couldn't be sure that wasn't simply his own love for her reflected back at him.

He could feel himself smiling – a soft thing, at once tenderness and pride. She looked thoroughly pleased. And what was more, she wasn't retreating from him, stiff and suddenly cold. Her eyes were closed, the fringe of her eyelashes dark across the skin below them, and her chest rose and fell rapidly as she lay, draped across the bed as though boneless, basking in what he hoped was something like the euphoria he remembered. She certainly didn't look as though she was questioning her decision to engage in this sharing of flesh and touch with him this time.

No indeed. His fingers were coated with the slick evidence of her pleasure; something which heartily gratified the bestial, possessive thing in him. A thing hell-bent on doing whatever it took to prove that there was no better choice of mate for her than he was.

Tipping his head down he examined the clear, slightly viscous substance. Which really didn't feel at all like blood now that he was paying attention, the musky-sweet scent of it so much more appealing than the tang of metal. The light pressure of her hand at his leg shifted, and he looked up to see her eyes were open; hazy and warm in a way that made him think of a humid summer day, only far more pleasant. She was smiling at him, a small, satisfied curve of her lips which stoked the flame of that animal pride.

He had moved to touch her, toying with the idea of slipping his hand back between her legs and bringing her to that lovely writhing, gasping state again, when she sat up, a little shaky. He could feel her hand sliding up along the inside of his thigh and the muscles in his belly twitched with an eager trepidation. But she didn't settle her hand over his groin the way she had done before.

Folding her knees underneath her, she raised her arms to rest her hands upon his chest. Her head tipped forward out of his line of sight the split instant before he felt the heat of her breath on his skin.

Her lips ran along his skin, grazing the ragged band of scarring that marred his shoulder. His scars had never truly bothered him, not even when she had first looked upon him, unflinching. He had never really considered them part of what made him monstrous, and it was only now that she kissed him as though the marks weren't even there that it occurred to him they might have mattered. Not that he had the focus to think on it now. She seemed determined to map the surface of his chest; her mouth open and hot and languid, taking her time, inhaling slowly and deeply as if breathing him in.

Her hands were at his waist, sliding around to his lower back and then around again, fingertips joining her mouth in the pursuit of painting him in liquid fire. He could feel the length of her thigh pressed to his, and he had a lightning swift urge to use his hand at her back to pull her sideways into his lap and have that lush, soft weight against him, when she did something with her hand that sent a thick wave of pleasure sliding down his spine. Then he felt the dart of her tongue, and the wave became a jagged bolt of lust.

His hand was in her hair, gripping tight and half a breath away from forcing her back to that place and bid her touch him there again.

Instantly he let go, stricken with a sudden horror. How could he have thought to do such a thing? Even imagining it was wrong. The idea of _forcing_ her to do anything made his blood sour with a noxious blend of guilt and disgust.

He felt her touch at his wrist, folding her fingers with his in a way that would forever make him think of when she had guided his hand beneath her underthings – he tried to ignore the inappropriately-timed twitch of enticement in his groin at the image. Instead of disentangling him from her hair however she urged his fingers to curl and to pull, ever so slightly.

He stared at her, baffled.

"You won't hurt me," she said calmly, and something in her tone made him wonder which she meant: that this in particular wouldn't cause her pain, or that he himself was incapable of doing so. Neither was correct, and yet somehow both seemed to be.

She pulled again, and her chin tipped up, showing him the long line of her throat the way an animal might have shown submission. It was like an open invitation to look and so he did, following the path of pale skin down to where it led: slender arms and shoulders, bare breasts soft and full as ripe fruit.

"I'll tell you if I don't like something, just like you'll tell me, right?"

His eyes lifted back to her face, turning her words over in his mind.

She was reassuring him, telling him that she wouldn't keep silent and allow him to hurt her, yet he couldn't brush off the inkling that she had been telling him more than that. Did she _want_ him to pull her hair? That didn't seem right…and the idea didn't especially appeal to him. He was missing something, something tucked between the demonstration and her assurances to be communicative.

"So," she continued, though he hadn't answered her first question, "did you want me to stop, or keep going?"

His pulse jumped in his throat. Stop? He didn't think he'd wanted anything more than her mouth on him – the strength of that wanting having alarmed him. He nearly shook his head before he remembered that she wouldn't know to which choice he was referring…when it suddenly struck him.

Was she referring to the impulse he'd had to physically hold her in place against him? But how could she have known? Unless it wasn't actually the depraved thing it had seemed to him in the moment. Was she saying he could – and that it was permissible to – communicate with her this way? Tell her what he didn't like, or, in this case, what he did?

One thing was clear, she wouldn't move until he answered her somehow, and something told him she wouldn't respond favorably to his usual method. He felt suddenly shy. It was different, asking her to touch him rather than the other way around. But he wanted it to the point of need, and badly enough to fold.

Cupping the base of her head he exerted a light, guiding pressure, just enough to be felt before letting up. Whether it was the kind of answer she was looking for or not it seemed enough. She ducked her head, lips pressing gently against his chest as he'd wanted her to, but not quite satisfactory.

He arched his back, trying to coax her to move. And move she did.

The heat of her mouth was incredible, bringing with it a rich surge of pleasure. The touch of her tongue a lick of fire, striking melting sparking along his nerves as she traced a tight circular pattern into his skin.

The ache in his groin had been a steady, chafing annoyance since the moment she had set her fingers to the buttons of her shirt, but at the soft slide of her tongue the pressure reached a point of pain he could no longer endure.

He shoved himself away from her to stand, hand dropping to the band of his trousers to relieve the constraint. He had the zipper halfway open by the time his brain caught up with him and he stilled.

She had wanted him to remove them, hadn't she? He thought she had…the way she was watching him from her spot in the center of the bed, anticipation bright in her lovely green-brown eyes certainly implied she did. He hoped that was the case, for he felt as though if he didn't get them off he was going to chafe raw and bloody.

Before he could second-guess himself into cowardice he wrenched the zipper the rest of the way down and freed himself with a grunt at the drag of the rough fabric against his flesh, somewhat dismayed when the relief was minimal and fleeting.

He had performed a cursory examination of himself when last he had bathed. While familiar enough with it to understand the rudimentary structure and purpose – purpose which appeared to have been only part of the entirety. It seemed odd for an organ seemingly intended for the use of emptying the bladder to also produce such heightened, and intensely separate, sensation, but the oddness seemed rather insignificant when he considered the nature of that sensation. As well as Whitney's apparent appreciation for it.

Although she didn't appear appreciative just now.

For a lengthy moment she just stared at him, her eyes wide as though in shock or alarm. He glanced down at himself, hard and swollen and aching. It was alarming. Should he put it away? He wasn't sure he could fit back into his trousers, but he would do it if she asked him to, discomfort be damned. Yet when he looked back to her for direction it was to find the expression had left her, replaced by something that resembled awe, or…admiration? He was clearly addled in the head. All his blood did seem to centered everywhere _but_ his brain.

It didn't occur to him to stop her when she reached. But then her hand closed around him and his body clenched with a violence near to blinding.

Lashing out he seized her wrist. It was too tight – he knew it was. He could almost feel the bones creak, and he loosened the force of his grip, trying to remember why he'd grabbed her in the first place.

She was peering up at him, her face serene, framed by the burning hair tumbling down over her shoulders to veil her breasts. "I'll stop if you want me to," she said, her voice even and gentle as if she were soothing a creature she had stumbled across and startled without meaning to.

No. No, he didn't want that. It was just that her had was so small and hot and smooth…it alarmed him just how _good_ she felt.

He released her, hoping it was a satisfactory answer because he had lost the power to nod.

She responded by sliding her hand down the length of aching flesh. Pleasure burst along his spine, behind his eyes, deep in his thighs and he gasped, his body arching in uncontrollable reflex.

When he blinked the sparks from his vision it was to see her moving back toward the other side of the bed, her hand lifted, fingers curling in toward her upturned palm as if to beckon to him.

"Come here," she bid, and he had no thought to do anything but obey.

He sank to his knees upon the sheets, snared her around the middle and drew her to him, wanting her close, to sink into her yielding softness. The pressure of her lush little body against his swollen flesh a thing near torment.

She cupped the back of head in her hands, arching herself upwards to bring her mouth to his jaw. Her breasts met his chest, the tips beaded taut against his skin, her mouth skimming the backmost edge of the bone. She laid her open mouth to the sensitive place, breath sweet and warm. Her sly little tongue darted along the lobe of his ear and he couldn't contain the growl, couldn't stop himself from sliding his hand down along the dip of her back and filling it with the smooth, rounded flesh of her backside – hauling her up another inch or so.

She seemed to like that, for she made a tiny, pleased noise and set her mouth back to his skin, trailing lingering kisses down his throat.

His fingers flexed, his other hand folding around the slope of her thigh. Then came the white-hot streak of ecstasy when she licked a long line back up the side of neck and his hips arced upward, a helpless jerk of motion as his body strained toward her.

Every ancient animal instinct in him was railing – screaming – at him to do something. He had no idea what, and for the first time the hole in his knowledge was more than a passing annoyance. It _grated,_ fiercely, clawing inside him with frustration he didn't know how to appease.

Whitney seemed to echo his frustration, for she let out a hard, aggravated breath that had him wishing he could apologize for his obvious failing.

She was pushing at his chest, shoving at him insistently. At first he was confused, not understanding what she wanted. To let her go, maybe? Or…no, she was copying the request he'd made for her to lie down, if with a bit more aggression – which he found he rather liked. He complied, holding her secure while he rearranged his own limbs, amused when she continued to shove until his back met the mattress.

He took advantage of the opportunity to look at her, enjoying the play of the early morning light over her skin, the way her hair fell down her back as she settled above him – more than a little overwhelmed by the sight of her.

He felt her knees frame his sides, her thighs a pleasant pressure against his own. Her fingertips grazed the tight plain of his stomach, which contracted, hyper-responsive to the touch. He saw something in her eyes change, soften briefly before glossing-over with heat right before she took hold of the length of rigid flesh between his legs and he was lost.

He shuddered as she handled him, sure, firm strokes along the shaft from root to end. If it had felt good feeling her through the barrier of clothing it was nothing next to what it was to have her hand on him. He was bleeding sensation, pleasure rippling through him in luscious waves; staggering, clumsy and dazed, toward that something he very desperately needed yet couldn't name.

He forced one of his hands from her, groping blindly for something to grip and sinking his fingers into the side of the bed, pulling the fitted sheet halfway off. He _would_ _not_ bruise her again. He refused. But she was not making it easy to remember himself and he almost feared his effort would be in vain.

Before long he was moving with her, utterly unable to stop his hips from arcing up into her touch. When she paused, running her thumb along the very tip he thought he might snap his own spine in two for the lightning stab of pleasure. It burned all the way up his back to his brain and his heavy breath shattered upon a moan that was pure anguish.

Absently he wondered if this would be the thing to kill him. If so, he would welcome death and gladly. After everything, if it came by her hand, it would be well worth it.

Her hand slid slowly up, twisting gently – and it broke him.

Pleasure wracked him, wrenching swift and sure. He convulsed, clawing at the mattress, and she eased him through it, as he shuddered and throbbed and as a hot fluid substance surged over her fingers to pool upon his abdomen. He was – somewhere in the innermost recesses of his mind – mildly horrified; more by the explosive nature of it than the fluid itself. It was a mirror of her own liquid pleasure, nothing more. And he didn't quite have the capacity to hold to anything but the languid bliss causing him to melt right into the bed.

As if from far away he became aware of Whitney moving, sliding from where she'd sat astride him – which he weakly wanted to protest. She had not, he realized, left the bed. Merely leant to reach over the side for something and reemerging with her own shirt in hand. After using it to wipe down the back of her hand she folded the green cloth and smoothed it across his belly with an almost doting tenderness to clean up the mess of his release. Finished, she tossed the soiled garment lightly back to the floor.

Tossing him a smile that was an almost feline contentment she stretched out beside him. She laid a hand against the flat space between his chest and collarbone, her arm cushioned in the seam between his own arm and his body as she tucked herself against his side.

His heart squeezed beneath his breastbone when she pressed a soft kiss to the crest of his shoulder, his veins flooded with euphoric warmth and so much love for her he felt as if he might burst. That she was there with him, her skin to his, as if he were any other normal man worthy of her touch, her smile, because she had chosen to be…it was miraculous.

He was, every part of him, hers. Whatever she asked of him he would give her. Whatever it took, whatever the cost.

* * *

 **NOTES:**

I told you things were gonna get fucking steamy. How are we feeling about that?

This was SO MUCH FUN TO WRITE. JESUS. I feel like it got away from me a little bit, both in length (hurr) and in the level of dirtiness. I mean, I shouldn't be surprised by the first one because it's me and I am infamously long-winded. But the second one surprised me. I guess I've been as thirsty for these two to just stop dancing around it and bang already as they were. I don't think I'm alone there.

This is actually just the first half of what was originally going to be one chapter until I hit the twenty-page mark and saw how much of what I plotted I still had left and realized I'd need to split it up. I try to keep my chapters at or under 25 pages for the sake of attention span, time, and Ao3's size limitations. So…I guess what I'm saying is standby for more sex!

You may have noticed that I didn't give Jason some crazy massive dick. I know some folks are into that and there is no shame coming from me, but I find there tends to be a bit of a trope/stereotype/expectation…I don't know what to call it, but it feeds into something of a toxic body-standard for men that I'm not into. So for the sake of realism (as much as there can be in this kind of fanfic), Jason's just a big dude. And also for the sake of realism, that can be a problem. But it's also possible to make things work anyway. Going to step off my soapbox now.

Someone commented – I don't remember where or exactly when – on how I'll write the same scene twice to focus on the two different perspectives, which I do mainly because this is an intensely character-based story. It's actually really interesting to write sex this way. Whitney's perspective is a bit cruder because of the language she uses, and Jason's is reliant on simile because he doesn't really know this language in a way to fit it to the context. Maybe it's just me, but I find that interesting.

As always – massive, MASSIVE thank you to every single one of you for reading, fav/following and your life-giving comments. Right now, the positivity and love is everything. I did want to mention that, unlike Ao3, doesn't allow for ease of replying to comments, which I dislike. I'm already insanely long-winded in my notes, so I don't reply. But that does not mean I don't read every single one multiple times and wish I had a way to legit respond.

I'm going to go back to writing now, because I am going to ride this train until either it stops or I do.

Be safe and be well.

Until next time!


	24. Heavy in Your Arms

**.**

 **CHAPTER 24  
** Heavy in Your Arms

~/13/~

Jason lay like a corpse.

If not for the continued rise and fall of his chest she might have thought he was one – that she had expelled the life from him with just her hands. But no, he was simply recovering, coming down from the high. A high powerful enough to necessitate recovery of the completely motionless variety. She wasn't sure he could have gotten up even if they'd been in gripping and immediate danger, and she could not honestly think of a higher compliment than that.

Whitney rubbed her cheek against the uppermost curve of his bicep, pleased and a little amused.

What a thing it must be, for physical pleasure to be so new and novel. She didn't think she could even remember her first orgasm. Just that she would have been in her early teens and it would have been half by accident. Much like his, ironically. Only without help from another person. Chasing sensation much in the same manner as picking at a scab: thinking that maybe it wasn't a good idea but doing it anyway, and then somehow surprised when it resulted in bleeding. Though pleasant, she vaguely remembered being too shocked and alarmed to maintain much of the pleasure at the time.

Sighing contentedly she scooted up and over a few inches in order to roll onto her stomach, cushioning her head upon folded arms. Wanting to keep contact, she scooted back until her hip was resting lightly against the back of his forearm. She felt a bit restless, like there was a faint itch buried somewhere under her skin though she couldn't quite pinpoint where. Certain it would settle, she ignored it in favor of studying Jason's masked profile.

The right side was facing her: skull a bit enlarged, a little misshapen, neck muscle a little twisted down where it became shoulder, a slight warping to the shell of the ear. She didn't notice it like she used to, though she wasn't sure she could remember exactly at what point that had happened, and when she did notice it wasn't with the pity she'd once had. Empathy she had in spades. Empathy that he'd had to suffer at the hands of others, but not that he had been born as he had. It had been a silly thing to pity, all things considered.

At the back of her mind she realized that both times she had engaged him intimately – specifically where the head and neck were concerned – she had done so with his left side. It hadn't been premeditated. She reflexively leaned to the right when she kissed and it had just happened that way.

Had he noticed? Stupid question: he _would_ have noticed. He had proved just how hyper-sensitive he was where his supposed deformity was concerned, and he would have been nothing but aware of the exact places she had chosen to put her mouth. It didn't seem to have bothered him…at least not outwardly. She wasn't sure whether that was because he had been too consumed by the fact that she was kissing him to give a damn about that in particular, or because he had expected as much.

She worried at the inside of her cheek, intensely bothered by that possibility.

She wasn't really worried that he would ever resent her for it. He seemed uniquely comfortable with the way he had come to see himself, and if she did avoid that side of him it would never make him love her less. But she _wasn't_ avoiding it, because it genuinely didn't bother her, and she did not want him believing anything different. The next time she went for his neck or jaw or ear, she was going to make that crystal clear. And she was going to make sure he heard just how much she enjoyed it while she did.

For now, she was content to simply lie there with him, lazy and happy. It felt nice like this, just being with him. It had felt nice before, too – between waking and deciding to rid herself of her clothes, when she had been nestled there against him, allowed to simply rest and feel. She found she was quite looking forward to more of that aspect of this unconventional relationship.

The thick muscle in his arm bunched as he shifted beside her, turning onto his side and propping himself up on the elbow. His eyes were lit with a little bit of wonder as he gazed down at her. It made her smile.

Part of her wanted to speak. Wanted to ask how he was, as if she didn't know perfectly well. Ask if he'd enjoyed it. Again, as if she hadn't been able to tell – she didn't think she'd ever seen someone come that hard. Another part desperately wanted to apologize for having run off last time, to explain why, but she had a feeling he might already know. And really…there was nothing else that needed saying just now.

Extending a hand, he brushed the back of it across her brow, sweeping her hair away and over her shoulder. Fingers uncurled, palm molding softly to her shape as he followed the line of her back from nape to buttocks, noting the slight twitch when he skimmed the dip over where her kidneys would be. She carried much of her tension there – of the emotional sort, not the physical. Whether he knew of this as a concept was unclear, but he was aware of the response and lightened his touch before passing over the place and his hand curved with the shape of her ass, nearly engulfing the entire half of it.

She closed her eyes and tried to relax. He was just being affectionate, exploring her, but she was realizing with the more he touched her that she had been simmering at a low level of arousal for a while now and she was having a hard time not squirming around.

The insides of her thighs slid together – far more smoothly than they normally would have – and it was purely because of that not-entirely-satisfied state, the liquid slick and slightly sticky across her skin like blood, or tears. The pain and frustration of going untouched. But he _had_ touched her, and extremely thoroughly. So why was she still so damn restless?

She felt rather than saw him lean, heard the less than pleased groan of the box spring as he shifted. Then she felt the faint rasp of nicked fiberglass against her back, smoothing once, then stilling, simply resting there.

Never once had he showed any indication that he might be bothered by the barrier his mask made. She'd assumed he had completely enfolded himself into the shield, that it had essentially _become_ his face. But now, as he moved as though to mimic rubbing his cheek against her skin, as if he wished to do just that…

It broke her heart to realize that he might have wanted to for a while now, but that he clearly did not feel safe. It might have been easier before, when she was just some random girl. But now? Now that there were emotions involved – emotions and intense physical bonding – he might never feel safe enough to remove that barrier. He feared losing her too much, and no amount of reassurance was going to ease that fear.

His breath fanned hot across the small of her back and she shivered. Another rasp of fiberglass across her skin – an edge this time, as if he'd lifted his head at her tiny movement and caught her with the chin.

The bed dipped, the weight and warmth next to her rising, moving away. His knee grazed the side of her calf and her eyes fluttered open just as she felt his hands curl around her shoulders. The pressure was light. A question – a _request_ – coaxing her to sit up.

Straightening her elbows she shifted, careful when she slid her shins an inch or so forward. He was kneeling behind her, framing her own legs with his and she didn't want to kick him. His arms circled her: one sliding across her shoulders, the other across her middle and another tiny shiver shook her body, chasing the path of his touch. At first he was simply holding her. Then he was pressing her gently, steadily backward as if to obey some unspoken need to eliminate the empty space between them. Pressing until she felt the rigid length of him against the small of her back.

He had softened at least somewhat – she had felt it. Evidently not for very long. _Stamina_ , she thought with another feather-light shiver, or perhaps simply a result of such intense and prolonged sexual tension.

At first she thought he was going to ignore it as he had last time, focus instead on cuddling and nesting behavior. Though if he'd been going to do that she wasn't sure why he wouldn't have just grabbed her around the waist and spooned her or something of the…

His hand had left her upper arm, trailing first down and then across to palm her breast. She came nowhere close to filling his hand, but he cupped the weight as if she did – with the reverent wonder of a man thoroughly engrossed in what he was doing. He ran the pad of his thumb over her nipple, and for all that her brain promptly stopped all function aside from processing of sensation she didn't miss the deliberate intent behind it. A brief graze followed by a slow, teasing circular motion that had her arching into him and caused the already tight point to tighten further. And _ache_.

Oh, this was deliberate all right, and not in the way of cuddling turned accidentally amorous. He'd intended it from the second he'd sat up and she didn't think her surprise at this was unwarranted. Given his pattern of shyness and consistent need of direction she had assumed it would take much longer before it occurred to him to initiate things for himself – or before he felt comfortable doing so. It seemed that he took her at her word where it concerned not needing permission, as well as a promise to redirect anything unwanted, and deemed it all the coaxing he needed. There was not a single thought of complaint from her. It was another hint of the same assertion he'd shown when dragging her across the bed to him: not forcing, but stating in the most straightforward way he could what he wanted of her.

To have him at her back this way was like being held against a literal wall, albeit one made of flesh. It reminded her of that night in the kitchen, when he'd unwittingly pinned her against the sink and her world had been reduced to the sense of being utterly and deliciously overpowered. She liked it, as she had liked it then. _Way_ more than she should have.

She hadn't been as aware of it then – distracted as she had been by the earth-shaking nature of the revelations made – but she was now, mainly because it wasn't the first time she was catching herself delighting in the thought of being physically at his mercy.

She had always been there. The first contact they'd ever had was his slinging her over a shoulder like a bag of rice and carrying her away, and she was starting to wonder if this weird fixation she seemed to have was a direct correlation and whether that was an indicator of something not quite right. But…no, she didn't actually want him to _dominate_ her. At least not like _that_. The thought left her cold and far from eager. She was just still adjusting to being so into someone she normally would have dismissed purely on size alone for the fear she wouldn't be able to extricate herself forcibly if she ever needed to. This was more being giddy about him being able to pick her up and toss her around in a nice way (someday, maybe) not some deep, dark, unstable desire for him to hurt her. Because it wasn't just a feeling of being overpowered, but sheltered, protected.

Or, hell, maybe she was a bit unhinged. Right now she didn't give a damn.

Jason's hand shifted against her, cupping more firmly and giving the gentlest squeeze. Pleasure curled, catching in her veins like a spark to dry grass as the muscles between her legs gave an empty, clawing _pang_ of wanting.

She supposed her own restlessness should have been enough to warn her, but this was…intense. Even after having experienced a bone-meltingly good orgasm she had been agitated, fidgety, downright uncomfortable. She had put it down to the sense of emptiness; the purely biology-based lack of quite literal fulfillment that often accompanied pleasure accomplished via surface-level contact. Something all the more nagging when she had a partner more than capable of providing it so close within reach. But this was more than just that. She was trembling and needy and tipping into pleasure as if she was chasing another climax.

Usually she couldn't stand that kind of stimulation again for at least an hour, not a mere fifteen to twenty minutes. And yet here she was, tipping her hips back into him in wordless plea that he would touch her again with those broad, clever fingers, anticipation welling fresh between her legs. So much of it that she was faintly surprised she wasn't actively dripping.

Was this an age thing? She'd never really had problems before, but then again her brain and her body had never quite seemed to be on the same page where sex was concerned. The rate at which she was producing lubricant was pretty much proof positive that something was different, be it age or her own ability to focus, or the prospective partner and the insane level of physical and emotional connection they seemed to share. Maybe it was the result of those weeks spent secretly pining – first in shame and then in resigned self-pity. Maybe this was what sex should have been all along and she just hadn't known. Did it even matter?

Being able to see him, feel him in her hand, had made her body want him that much more. Feeling him now, hot and heavy against her back, turned want to something desperate.

Whether his intent all along or no, Jason's other hand began to slip down over the slope of her belly. _Yes_ , she wanted to cry. All she could manage was a breathy sound she hoped he could recognize as encouragement. She reached up and blindly back, groping for his neck and gripping there as if for dear life, nails biting into the slab of muscle connecting it to his shoulder.

His fingers curved with the shape of her, soft, almost possessive. Her thighs flexed in answer, her lungs shuddering with the unbidden whimper.

Despite having discovered it – and what it could do – he didn't go directly for the knot of nerves, choosing instead to skim across and reach past it to slide deft fingertips through her folds as if to take measure of her wetness. If he were any other man she might accuse him of bragging, stoking his own ego with just how much of a needy mess he'd made of her. Not that it would have been entirely unearned, per say. But he wasn't any other man. This was purely tactile enjoyment of his partner; relishing her for her own sake.

Could he tell that her flesh was slightly swollen? It wouldn't have surprised her if he had, nor that he had picked up on the likelihood that it was a good strategy to ease her into direct contact. Normally, that would be right, and what she wanted. Not right now. Nor did she want to be simply petted and teased into convulsions. It wasn't enough.

She wanted more.

Her right hand shook as she settled it across the back of his wrist – a tremor that surged like electricity when he didn't automatically retreat at her touch. Pressing her shoulders into his ribs she used his body as leverage in order to widen the space between her knees and let her hand curve around his, remembering the time she had watched him oiling the blade of the machete and fantasized about those big, graceful hands.

At her coaxing the tip of his middle finger grazed her vaginal opening and it took everything she had not to collapse.

"One finger," she breathed, "here. Inside."

She had never been very vocal. Well, vocal, but not _talkative_ ; the usual things, _yes_ and _no_ and _good_ , the answer to a question. But she had never given explicit instructions on what she wanted. Embarrassed, she thought. Maybe ashamed. But she was neither of those things here. It was so easy with Jason, knowing that while he would more than likely figure it out in due time, she could urge him along a little quicker and they would both be all the more grateful for it.

While she had expected him to be careful, after all it was new and a bit…well, _more_ than anything else had been. She had also expected him to be tentative.

Tentative he was not.

Smoothly, gently, he followed her words and the guiding touch of her hand to slip his finger up and into her. It was painfully slow, and not just because he was being cautious. Even as aroused as she was, she was _so_ damn tight. The delicate muscles lining her channel were gripping at him, eager to the point of ferocity, but she almost couldn't care because the sensation of it was nothing short of ecstasy.

She held him there for a moment, steadying herself with a breath before encouraging him to retreat. At no urging of hers he curled the rest of his fingers in toward his palm, removing the hindrance to his range of motion on what must have been pure instinct, for he didn't seem to realize she was going to guide him back until she was pressing gently. This time when he slid inside it was to reach much deeper, and her entire body jerked with a spasm of delight.

Unlike with her suggestion to communicate with his hand in her hair, he seemed to have no problem understanding what she wanted from him. Without any further assistance he withdrew, almost completely, before pushing smoothly back.

" _Yes…_ "

It was a full on fucking moan, praising his intuition as much as reveling in the shivering clench of pleasure in her belly – and it had been _loud_ , low and seven kinds of vulgar. She could tell precisely how much the sound had affected him by the way the hand at her breast dropped by a few inches to splay across ribs and crushed her backward against his body. Feeling just how heavy his breathing had become. How goddamn hard he was, unmistakably. Bold.

He had sat back a bit on his heels to lessen some of their height disparity: curling himself around her, head bending, shoulders folding inward as much to be as physically close to her as possible as to better the angle of his arm. With the increase in ease of movement his thrusts became deeper, surer, but still just a little too gentle.

She squirmed, pressing encouragingly at his forearm to coax him to move a bit more firmly, a gentle reminder not to focus overmuch on not hurting her. Simultaneously she let her hips move, rocking slightly to set a faster pace and gasping when he followed her lead as smoothly as if he had performed this same act a thousand times before.

"Now—" she began, her thoughts and words derailed by the slide of his hand across her torso to fill his palm with the soft flesh of her other breast as though he had somehow known how it ached.

He didn't simply hold and softly tease her this time, either. He took the stiff point of her nipple, rolling it between his fingertips, playing with her in a way that elicited a sharp, sweet throb of pleasure and had the muscles between her legs clenching at the intrusion of his other hand. He slowed his pace slightly, feeling the correlation between one touch to the other. In perfect synch with his next thrust he gave the tight little bud a soft, careful pinch, and she had to work to string together anything more substantial than an appreciative whine at the bleeding sparks of sensation.

"Now add…another finger— _uhhn…_ "

No sooner had the word left her lips he had moved to comply, and with the addition of his index finger her head fell back against his chest with a high, breathless moan. He had thick fingers, but she was so damn wet that even the slight discomfort of being stretched wasn't even fully a discomfort as she would have recognized it. She simply felt fulfilled, the way she had been craving all this time.

Letting her hand fall heavily from his arm, she found the slope of his thigh. She ran her hand up the length of it to his flank and held him there, fingers curling into powerful flesh while she arched her hips into the steady motion of his hand. She felt the grunt against her back at her touch the split second before the heel of his palm pressed into the crest of her cunt to create lightning – and whether it was intentional or not the wrenching throb along her nerves had her eyes near to rolling back in her skull.

Her head lolled, her cheek meeting skin flushed hot and streaked with sweat. The scent of him was thick in her nose and mouth – earth and leather and musk – and she wanted to drink it down, absorb it, until she could taste nothing else. And he was rocking with her, grinding almost unthinkingly against the point where her back transitioned into her ass.

Jesus _fuck_ she was hot for this man.

The pulsing rhythmic clenching of her pelvic muscles was starting to spiral and unravel, and for all that she probably should have had him use a third before anything else, the animal lust in her was not content to settle for just his fingers – wonderful as they were. She wanted him on top of her. Not just above, as he had been minutes ago, but enveloping her, bearing her down into the bed with his sheer mass.

She wanted it more than she had ever wanted anything. And she was going to have it.

~/~

The concept of happiness had been somewhat elusive for a long time: a thing reduced to a comparison made to memories that were unreliable at best.

He remembered the day Whitney had asked him whether killing made him happy. It had been a question meant to ascertain something of his character, he'd surmised, and he knew now that if he had answered with a yes that they would not be here right now. If he had said yes, it would have secured him as a villain in her eyes, deserving of all the fear and loathing she had once had for him. He had answered with the truth; and it had been in part because he would very much rather spend his time doing anything other than killing, but in part because he had been unable to remember what it was to be happy when the word had ceased to have real meaning.

As he'd lain there, his body singing, her chin tucked over his shoulder, he had remembered – with absolute clarity – what happiness was. It wasn't the pleasure, though that was nothing short of incredible, or that the beautiful woman next to him was naked and warm and satisfied (equally incredible), it wasn't even necessarily the closeness for its own sake. It was the sense of togetherness, of being wanted. For the first time, since some indeterminate point in his youth, he felt like a person. Whole, not withered and scored and damaged. Worthy of the care and affection said beautiful woman had showed him. For the first time he didn't find himself second-guessing what on earth she was doing there with him. He only felt love. And loved.

Whitney sighed quietly, a light, dreamily contented sound that seemed to encompass precisely what he felt.

He angled his head toward her, though with the limitations his mask placed on his peripheral vision he could see only the lower half of her as she rolled onto her stomach, presenting the long, sleek line of her back.

Though he knew he was grown, there were still times when he felt very much like a boy. He understood that what had passed between them – what they now were to one another – resided very solidly in the realm of what was _adult_ , and that simply due to the quite…unconventional nature of his having grown up, there were things about it that he had missed. Things lost that he would never get back. Which a small part of him might have resented if he hadn't thought it a waste of time.

And that was the biggest thing he had lost, he realized. Time. The time for the boy he had been, still shy and overwhelmed by the attention of a pretty girl and having no clue why, to shift naturally into the man that recognized and understood that attention What it meant and what to do with it. Much of what he knew was garnered from half-forgotten fragments seen through the lens of a child and long-since rusted over, or else from nature around him. The latter being the more helpful of the two did not strike him as very strange. Humans were little more than slightly more complex beasts, after all. He no longer felt that the lack of human social conditioning rendered him automatically inferior, but he could understand that the tiny, spit-second reflex he had to look away from her naked form – to blush and fidget and probably fall on his face if he tried to do anything else – was a direct result of the crevice his loss had created.

It wasn't that he was undeserving. That she was there at all was proof enough of the opposite. It was simply that he was still catching up on twenty-odd years of learning and acclimating and settling into his own skin that he hadn't done for lack of opportunity, or desire.

The light was warming as the sun rose in earnest, pouring in through the open window to set a golden cast to her skin. He shifted to his side to look at her, catching the hint of her smile when he did.

It was half hidden behind her hair, tumbling around her shoulders and veiling her mouth until he reached to smooth it gently away. His knuckles grazed the nape of her neck, and he spread his fingers, laying his hand against her smooth, sun-warm skin and letting it slide softly, reverently down the length of her back.

She gave the faintest of flinches when he reached a point at the middle of her back – a tiny bunching of muscle below the skin – and he eased the pressure of his touch automatically. A knot perhaps, like the kind he occasionally found pinching in his shoulders? He hadn't felt anything there, so perhaps not. Maybe simply a sensitive spot, ticklish, or the site of an old injury.

In contrast to the boyish nerves, the quite grown beastly parts of him were not driven to blush and shy away from her. Quite the contrary. There was a comfort there, a certainty to the soft warmth he felt when he looked at her, the ownership that was not ownership at all…but perhaps that of _being_ owned? Possession derived from belonging. Ferocity derived from the knowledge that to see her anything but well and whole and happy was to see himself wounded. Confidence derived from the knowledge that she'd had her freedom, and yet decided that freedom to her looked like coming back here to be with him.

" _My life is here now, with you."_

What he knew of human…pairing could have fit inside a matchbox, evident by the way he had no name for it. He knew what he suspected to be surface-level details, thin slivers pared from a whole forever beyond his ability to ever fully grasp, unavoidably skewed from the perspective of a child without model or experience to build from that half-forgotten foundation. But none of this prevented him from understanding the significance of her having said it, nor of the way she had kissed him after. As with many other things, the exactness might have been outside his knowledge, but the importance was not.

He wasn't a fool, he knew full well she didn't love him the way he loved her. But that was all right. It was enough that she wanted to be with him.

On impulse he bent, lowering his head to the smooth span of her back where it dipped at the waist until the side of his mask gently grazed her skin. The ferocity with which he wished he could feel her against his face was so much that it wrenched inside him, a biting pain in his heart. He wanted to press his cheek against her and feel her warmth there. He wanted to feel her softness against his lips.

His hand tightened where it rested against the rounded flesh of her backside at the fantasy forming in his head of setting his mouth to her skin the way she had done to him, following the path of the pulse in her throat, licking at a small, pretty ear, tracing the shape of her breasts with his tongue.

The flesh between his legs twitched, enthralled by the image, the coil of tension spreading out from where it was building low in his abdomen and deep in his thighs. He was hard for her again, hungry for her. What was the etiquette here? She wasn't asleep, merely resting. Serene. But maybe she would rather he not touch her just now. Maybe it was too soon? He didn't want to risk driving her from the bed…but then she had said she would tell him if she didn't like something. Surely she had meant that in reference to things beyond that single moment.

With a steadying breath he straightened, shifting up onto his knees and moving so that he bracketed her long, slender legs between them.

Looking down on her like this allowed him perfect view of the gentle hourglass shape of her body – the narrowness of her waist only emphasized by arms folded to pillow her head and inviting his eyes to follow the curve down. She was utterly bewitching. Alluring and lovely.

Leaning slightly forward he grasped her shoulders, his fingers curving over the delicate conjunction of bones and tendons to urge her up. It was meant to be an invitation: one she could absolutely ignore or decline if she chose to. He had absolutely no desire to force her, and she did seem comfortable where she was…yet she was shifting before he could second-guess himself, unfolding her arms and sliding her knees forward and underneath her to sit up as he was. It was a uniquely graceful movement: a sinuous arc of spine, shoulders rolling back under his hands, and he found himself drawn straight into it, his arms folding around her to pull her gently back.

She was lush and soft and silky smooth, the shape of her molding to him as if she belonged there. As if she had never belonged anywhere else. The slope of her lower back met his front, pushing against the hardness of…whatever it was called. The shaft-shaped organ which ached at the contact in the most delicious way. He indulged himself by angling his hips forward, pressing his groin into the curving shape of her and sucking in a breath at the hot, urgent pang which followed.

His hand left her arm, sliding to her breast. It was different touching her this way, the distribution of that soft, perfect flesh having changed with gravity to fill the cup of his palm – though his hands dwarfed her simply by virtue of his being so much larger than she was. The weight was light and yet strangely substantial. Heavy, somehow, without actually being heavy at all. He traced his thumb over the tip, wondering if she felt what he had when she'd touched him in his mirror of this place – those bright, bleeding sparks of pleasure.

She had been relaxed against him, yet as the little bead of flesh grew stiff at the graze of his finger her back was curving with strain, arching into his touch and her chin tipping up on a musical gasp. Her hips angled back, rocking the curve of her bottom into him and eliciting a delicious throb of sensation – begging again for her slim little fingers to curl around him.

The combination of that sound, that movement…it was as if she had never wanted anything more than his hands on her. The culmination of her skin – flushed and hot like fever – and the scent of her, suddenly overwhelming, pressing up into his hand at her breast. He was greedy for it. Greedy for her. For the slickness he would find between her thighs as his other hand slipped down over the base of her pelvic bone.

He felt her hand curving around the side of his neck, her thumb digging into the notch of his collarbone while her other fingers dug into the base of his scarred shoulder. Gripping him as if for support, or for balance. Her thighs were trembling, yet the subtle forward tilt of her hips was clearly encouragement, eagerness, the sound unraveling from her tongue one of wordless pleading. Though he still had no name for the potent, vicious satisfaction he derived from it, he could only assume it was something to do with the possessiveness he felt toward her. If she was pleading, it meant that she wanted him with a desperation that echoed his own. If she wanted him, it was because he pleased her. And pleasing her was paramount to any- and everything else short of keeping her safe.

The rasping texture of dark curls gave way to unimaginable softness. His fingers slid easily through folds made slippery with that fascinating wetness. The intriguing pink place would be glistening with it. An image which brought a tight coil of desire deep in his belly. Some part of him knew to be pleased by this, just as with the faintly swollen state of her, understanding it to be the female mirror of his own swollen flesh. It was another sign that she was pleased with him, which automatically resulted in a pleasure all his own – both of the flesh and of the mind.

Her voice was airy, breathless. A tiny, needy sound that tugged at him. Once again he felt that strong internal pull telling him to do something that he couldn't piece together. It hovered like a word on the tip of the tongue, just at the edge of his mind. But he didn't know it. This was instinct trying to present itself but he didn't have the knowledge to lean into it. It would be something she knew, something other men had known to give her, and that _he_ didn't was incredibly frustrating.

How did he ask her? He couldn't even pose the tone of a question, let alone the form of one. He couldn't ask her what she wanted, or what he was supposed to do. He couldn't even tell her to _show_ him…

Her hand was light where she touched the back of his. Her back arched slightly, her shoulders leaning heavily into him and her thighs spreading wider, until her toes brushed the insides of his calves. And it was as if she had read the agitation through his body. She was guiding his hand, shaping it, pressing his fingers upward until the folds gave beneath the pressure.

"One finger here," she instructed. The words barely above a heavy whisper, but he heard them all the way down to his marrow. "Inside."

Something about the word nagged at him. It was important. Vitally so. But before he could think on it further his middle finger was sinking into her – a tight, narrow channel, slick and molten hot. He barely had time to register this new interesting thing before she was coaxing him away, fine, strong internal muscles gripping at him, pulling as though reluctant to let him go. The edge of his smallest finger grazed the inside of her thigh and reflexively his other fingers curled inward as she paused just at the brink of removing him. Then she pressed him back in again, his finger sinking deep, down to base. She stiffened, gasping.

Sparks lit in the back of his brain. Bright and urgent. He had just tapped into something crucial, and he barely needed her feedback to know it. _This_ it seemed to be screeching at him. _Do this._

 _Now._

Not waiting for verbal verification, he repeated the movements she'd shown him; withdrawing the intrusion of the finger before gliding back with a single, smooth push of his hand.

Her body shuddered. He felt it in her shoulder pressed against his ribs and her hand at his wrist, that fascinating internal channel that gripped almost greedily around him. In the same instant she let out a low, throaty moan that wove down the length of his spine to settle in his abdomen.

" _Yes…"_

The length of swollen flesh between his legs pulsed. _Hard._

He needed no further urging than that.

Curving inward around her, he spread his knees a bit wider and sank back on his haunches, dragging her back until he had her pressed flush to the front of his body. He could reach her better this way, angle his hand so that it was easier to repeat the smooth thrusting motion that seemed at once strange and yet intensely enthralling. Something about the movement itself in conjunction with this part of her, this sleek, tight interior place, the impossible heat of her. Something about a part of him being _inside_ of her…

She was pressing down on his forearm, causing his next entry into her to be a little harder than previously. In the same moment she arced her hips forward to meet him. At first he was blind to anything but the heady twinge of desire sharp as a knife in his gut, only belatedly realizing it was her encouragement to move faster. He obeyed the unspoken request, deeply, savagely pleased when she kept moving her hips that way, rocking into his hand the way she had done on her back with her neck arched and face strained with pleasure.

His other hand turned at the wrist, moving over the sleek skin below her breasts to curve with the shape of her, the tight pink tip pressing up into his skin as if pleading for touch. Though perhaps that was merely his own craving to do so. He worried it between gentle fingertips, delighting in the sensation of, the contrast to the soft weight of her in his hand. It was done purely selfishly, yet to his surprise, the grip of her body around the finger sliding smoothly inside her clenched sharply in what appeared to be a direct correlation with his touch to her breast.

Taking the little bud of flesh between two fingers he squeezed, ever so slightly, timed with his next thrust.

His reward was a trembling, desperate sound, a rush of heat sliding over his knuckles. And that overwhelming surge of primal power rippling through his blood like wildfire.

He didn't know the word for it, but the sound, what he had done to produce it, was lusciously erotic. He wanted to hear her make that sound again. He wanted her to shudder and arch and come apart the way she had before. Just like this, pressed up against him, so he could feel every inch of her as she did.

"Now add…" she was saying, her breath leaving her in something closer to heaving pants than plain words. "…another finger—"

 _Yes._

Almost without having to think it his index finger uncurled, joining the middle to sink deep inside her as she moaned and shivered, and let her head fall back against his chest.

Her hand slipped from where it had grasped his forearm, brushing the outside of his leg – the muscle twitching, overly responsive to the feather-light touch. She flattened her palm against him, tracing an almost greedy line up the length of his thigh to stop just below the hip, slender fingers curling to his flesh. The hot, shuddering streak of pleasure in the pit of his belly struck him like a fist. It was like she was pulling him up against her, urging him to press his hips into hers, and he was helpless to do anything else.

This was lust. As old as life and just as persistent. Demanding and pleading and near to frantic, climbing up his spine and pooling deep in his thighs.

He followed the rhythmic back and forth roll of her body, dragging himself against the lush curve of her bottom, relishing the sweet pain it brought him. He could feel her cheek against his skin, her breath hard and half gasping with each exhale, her skin slick, her hair a teasing graze against his ribs, the grip of her tight and sleek about his fingers.

Even this…this blissful synchronicity was not enough. There could be not a single hint of space between them and he would still want to be somehow closer. He wanted to be. _Needed_ to be. Needed to…he didn't know what, but he wanted it and with a sharp, gnawing ferocity that he didn't know how to answer.

Her hand slid up the side of his neck, the edge of her smallest finger pressing into the back corner of his jaw. A place purely hers, he thought, forever marked by her first real expression of wanting him. The place she had first kissed him.

"Stop—"

It was a weak, breathy murmur, almost too soft for him to hear over the mindless roar in his ears. He thought he had imagined it until she repeated it, her lungs heaving as if to speak was an agony.

"Stop…"

He did. Immediately. Though it took him near to herculean effort to will himself to stillness, more still to remove his hand from her, he did, resting it flat upon the upper slope of her thigh. There had been nothing in her voice to suggest it, nor had there been any physical sign of it, yet he felt a cold shard of worry slip into his stomach, suddenly wondering if he had done something wrong. Why else would she stop him completely rather than redirecting him the way she had done before?

She twisted within the loose circle of his arms, and whatever concerns might have been creeping to life inside him were instantly silenced when he saw the look on her face. Lips parted, reddened as though stained by eating something luscious and sweet like the juice of a strawberry that he might have tasted were he to kiss her. They were glossy as if she had wet them. He could almost see her little pink tongue tracing the curve of her own mouth – felt the yearning throb in his belly hitch at the conjured image – and her eyes were burning, _wanting…_

Her hand wound around the back of his neck, using it as leverage to reach him as she arched up and pressed her lips to the underside of his chin – a lingering, open-mouthed kiss that turned into two, and then three, before she pulled back.

"Wait—wait here," she told him, sliding out of reach and from the bed, tottering a bit unsteadily on her feet for a moment before she regained her balance. "I'll be right back."

He peered up at her, more puzzled than concerned. She took a few steps back toward the door, but she was moving slowly, her eyes heavy and sliding along his form. His mind took gratified note of the look, the way her eyes lingered on certain parts of him – his arms and chest, the length of flesh stiff and flushed with need. Obviously she found him desirable, otherwise none of this would have happened. Still, some part of his brain was geared to take the signal of that look telling him so and react with a swell of pride.

Holding her palms out to him in a staying gesture, she ordered: "don't move," and disappeared out into the hall.

It was excruciating difficult to ignore the compulsion to get up and follow her, the purely animal part of him wanting dearly to sling her over a shoulder and toss her back down on the bed and hold her still while he slid his fingers back into the slick heat between her legs. What if he were to use his thumb at the same time, stroke at the sensitive little bead nestled at the top of those pretty folds of flesh while delving inside her? Would she break for him then?

A pang of need coursed through him, centering in the dull throb at his groin – which seemed to have become the very center of himself. Desperate and aching. He had the powerful urge to wrap his hand around it, to mimic the sliding strokes Whitney had used on him and relieve some of the discomfort, and was somewhat surprised by it.

He had been taught almost exclusively without spoken words that he wasn't to touch himself there apart from seeing to the function of urination, unless it was to wash. It had never occurred to him that there might be a reason aside from that of cleanliness. Knowing what he did now about this part of him, its involvement in this entangling of bodies and pleasure – and what few scraps he recalled of his mother's opinion on involvement between older boys and girls – he thought he understood it had been an indirect caution against the exact thing that had just flitted through his mind.

But why? Why caution him against it? Because it was bad? Dirty? The way his mother had implied in her disapproval? But it hadn't felt like either of those things when Whitney had touched him. And _she_ was neither bad nor dirty.

Still something gave him pause – more to do with Whitney's words than to any unease on his part.

 _Wait,_ she had said. _Don't move._

He didn't think this was quite what she had meant, but there seemed to be a wisdom in it. Not that he could have said in what way.

So he stayed where he was to wait, just as she'd told him to. Moving only to lift his hand, fingers shining, to the perforation beneath the nose-guard of his mask to breathe in the scent of her – musky and salty-sweet – and wondering again with a wistful yearning what it would be like to taste her.

~/~

Her knees had become pudding.

At least it certainly felt like they had as she wobbled her way down the stairs, gripping tight to the railing with one hand, her knuckles white and her heart battering at her sternum like a wild, trapped thing.

The floor was cold, clinging to the chill of the night before for all that there was pale sunlight streaming in through the windows. She padded on her tiptoes across the rec room to the kitchen, wavering once, badly enough that she had to throw out a hand to catch herself with the edge of the counter, and promptly snorting with giddy laughter at her own expense.

Adults ragged on and on about horny teenagers, but shit, she'd certainly never experienced that supposed reality. At least not enough to act on. And not at _all_ like this – where her own _skin_ didn't seem to fit her right anymore.

She didn't remember the last time she'd wanted a man inside her so badly. If she ever had. She felt slightly crazed, truth be told, lust and adrenaline putting an almost drunken slant to her center of gravity and a low tremor in her limbs. Her vaginal muscles were wracked with heartily unsatisfied spasms, grousing loudly at her for interrupting a perfectly fantastic experience, demanding she go straight back and let him finish what he'd started.

Which she was absolutely going to do.

She tore one corner of the paper bag in her haste to grab it from where she'd tucked it in the corner by the useless toaster, which would have tipped her into hysterical laughter if she hadn't been too busy staring down at the little black package cupped in her hand and tying to read the back of it.

Too small and the latex would break – not to mention being quite uncomfortable, she imagined. Too big and it might slip off, causing all manner of problems.

Now that she'd actually seen him, had her hand around him, she could better calculate and realized suddenly that average was not going to cut it.

She _did_ laugh then.

Men were so obsessed with (and sensitive about) the size of their dicks. Most who were average covetously wanted to be bigger, and those who were larger preened and bragged. Yet even among the men who fell on the bigger end of the spectrum, she knew for statistical fact that only a few of them were _actually_ large enough to max out the limits of average-size condoms. Jason – who had absolutely no concept of this stupid, supposed measure of machismo and prowess – was. As intimidated as she was by that, she couldn't help her amusement in the face of such perfect irony.

Tossing the second package back into the bag she returned to stairs, trying not to focus too hard on said larger-than-average cock. Or how fucking much she wanted it. Except it was hard not to think about it when the almost desperate craving she felt was so strange and new.

Her trip back up the stairs was a bit easier, since her legs had steadied somewhat. Only to re-liquefy the instant she stepped back into the room and saw him again.

Apparently having taken her words to heart, he was exactly as she had left him – on his knees, back to the door. She'd always had a bit of thing for a nice back: the way the muscle flared out from the depression of the spine, flowed into the shoulders and down into the arms, the slight lines that arced in mirror of the hipbones in more muscular men. Like this one. Her gaze followed those lines down the dip of lower back where he was sitting back on his heels, and just like that she found herself with an eyeful of his ass. And…

 _Oh._

Jesus fucking hell on a goddamn motorcycle.

She didn't even _like_ butts all that much. They were fine, but she definitely favored other parts of a man's body. Yet here she was, her mouth dry and her eyes wide as saucers, her pulse skittering in her throat like a cat's claws on wet tile.

He turned slightly, hearing her steps or simply sensing her there behind him. She caught the flash of heat in the eye she could see. There was a very natural authoritarian slant to that look – a firm order to get herself back over there or he was going to do it for her, and she was going to like it.

Or so said the feverish flutter between her thighs.

 _God,_ yes, please. _Yes._

She moved somewhat unsteadily forward, her fingers digging into the top of the box to break the tape sealing it shut.

His gaze dropped to it, blinking, his head angling with a curious tilt as she fished out one of the little silver packets and set the box on the table. She tore the packet open, extracting the circular roll of clear latex as she dropped back to the bed.

Reaching down, she cupped him gently in her palm, delighting in the sharp intake of air as she stroked him. He hadn't softened at all in the (albeit brief) time she had been gone, still beautifully hard and straining toward his stomach, which would make it all the easier to fit the condom into place. He looked down to watch her set it to the tip of him, another tilt of curiosity interrupting the stutter of his breath at the graze of her fingertips, then back up to her face as if in query.

"I'll explain later," she promised, guiding the latex up his length.

Trepidation fluttered high in her stomach, a tiny, sudden hint of unease. He was a big man. Every part of him was. She might have to spread her legs as far as they would go to fit his body between them. Which she would, and gladly. She'd take every goddamn inch of him she could.

Still…

"We're going to have to go slow, ok? You're a little...larger than average."

He had no idea what the hell she was talking about, but she saw his eyes widen, and it was concern there – _concern,_ not pride or smug, boastful arrogance. Any apprehension she had about doing this with him was gone the second she saw it.

She had taken him out of the mood a bit with those words, with the hint of uncertainty she knew had underlined her voice. She could see the gears working frantically behind his eyes, trying to decode what she meant, why it had sounded like a caution to be careful. Be careful of what? He didn't want to hurt her – so desperately _did not_ want to hurt her.

Sweet, gentle man.

She leaned back, catching herself on her elbows. Her knees were bent, her calves sliding against the outsides of his thighs in what was both an extremely vulnerable and _extremely_ sexual position. The fine muscles in her cunt gripped compulsively at nothing, a forceful pang of very specific hunger. She couldn't help it. The man had muscle in his legs that could have made a nun cry.

His gaze dropped, sliding over the length of her naked body, and the pang sharpened.

Extending a hand she reached for his arm, pleased when he offered a hand. She tugged gently, amused when he merely shuffled forward an inch or two, still too distracted by trying to think to do anything more.

She wanted to be patient with him, she truly did. But just the sight of him above her like this – broad and powerful and glorious – was enough to take that patience, crumple it into a ball, and chuck it far, far away. Her body kindly flipped the bird to her brain and did what it goddamn wanted. Which was to curl her calves around the back of his legs just under the butt and pull him forward.

With a startled exhale, he caught himself with a hand against the bedding beside her shoulder. The other splayed across her middle, as if to ensure she didn't move in his moment of unsteadiness. Just like that she was pinned down, her legs wedged open around his hips, and she was reaching down between them, her fingers wrapping around him to guide him to her opening. She could tell he understood when she saw his eye widen ever so slightly in dawning realization as his hips bore instinctively down over hers.

It ached a bit initially, and not in good way.

It was a horrible, destructive lie that intercourse was only painful the first time and never again. There were far more variables than a single barrier forever gone once tested – especially considering that barrier was total primordial bullshit forged in shame and control. Frequency of use was a factor, as with any group of muscles. As was the level of arousal. And, unfortunately, size. She wasn't sure if she was smaller or shallower than some, but it had always felt that way; that she required far more time to adjust than seemed normal. It was also _maddening_ that her body could want something _so badly_ and yet work so hard to keep it out.

Wincing, she forced her breath to leave her slowly and did her best to relax – difficult when everything in her was resolutely clamping down.

It was more discomfort than real pain. It didn't sting or burn the way it would if something was really wrong. But it was...a lot.

 _Damn_ it, this was _not_ how this was going to go. She refused to allow this to be like every other first time she'd experienced. She wanted something better with him than the resentment she wouldn't be able to fully swallow. And she owed her own body more than resentment.

She needn't have bothered with the hand she pressed against his chest, he was already pausing, her signs of distress far louder than any demand to stop she might have made. If he felt anything being an inch or so deep into her, he didn't show it. His eyes were rapt, his brow furrowed under the mask, frowning – clearly not liking whatever he read in her face. He began to pull away, and she knew there was not a single thought of complaint in his mind, only concern. Only caring.

Somehow knowing it reaffirmed her determination. She was going to make this work and enjoy the ever loving hell out of it.

"It's ok," she said, smoothing her hand reassuringly down his chest. "Everything's ok, I'm fine."

He was clearly unconvinced.

She smiled, hoping to put that inclination toward protectiveness at ease.

"Just—remember I said we'd have to go slow?" He didn't nod, but she knew he heard her and remembered. "You're a little big for me, that's all. I have to...adjust."

Sudden understanding flared to life like a spark behind his eyes and she wondered if he was recalling how tight she had been around his fingers. He glanced down to where they were joined – if only partly – seemingly contemplative. His hand was still at her waist. Though his grip there had tightened slightly it loosened now as he slid his palm up along her side, thumb meeting the underside of her breast before sliding back down, running all the way over her hip and thigh almost to her knee. Then he reversed path again, repeating the caress along the length of her body. Tender and…yes, soothing.

Somehow he'd gathered that the best way forward was to help her relax.

Clever man. And so damn loving. Far from frustrated or annoyed with her for not being perfectly ready at exactly the right time, he wanted to help her – wanted her to be comfortable and happy, not tense and in pain.

It was working, too.

The callus at his palms was just the right kind of rough, his fingernails blunt, but just long enough to graze gently across her skin when he turned his wrist to follow the shape of her thigh. It was nice, and endlessly affectionate. Especially considering he was probably aching something awful being so close to her this way. She never would have known it if he was.

She draped an arm over one heavy shoulder, enjoying the sense of closeness, of bonding through touch, her other running softly across his chest. And gradually her abdominal muscles began to loosen.

On his next path up he kept going, passing over her chest to reach her neck and stroking softly down the side of her throat, tracing the edge of her jaw. Her skin tingled in his wake, nerves singing at the touch. He brushed her chin, fingertips skimming her mouth, and she was about eighty percent sure his doing it meant that he wanted to kiss her – maybe even that he was imagining what it would feel like.

This time she didn't stomp down the reflex to open her mouth and flick her tongue against the tip of his index finger.

 _Oh,_ the way he looked at her…pupils blown wide and irises dark, as if he could devour her just with his eyes.

That look was pure promise. The kind of look that said very clearly that he fully intended on doing whatever it took to make her dissolve into a writhing, gasping wreck.

A hot rush of wetness, a pang of pleasure at the idea of just what he might do to elicit such a result. This time the reflexive clench of her cunt was not the kind that seemed designed to keep him out, but to pull him in. He felt it, the give of her body around him, and she didn't have to coax him forward.

With incredible care and a control that would have been beyond most men at their first time being inside a woman, he arced his hips and slowly, carefully pushed. So slowly that it was almost infuriating. But she let him, because she had no desire to ruin the moment again in her haste. And because the sensation of it, drawn out this way, was downright decadent, strong internal muscles closing greedily around him. Her eyelids fluttered, a low, involuntary sound falling from her tongue as the length of his cock slid deep.

There was nothing else quite like it: this sensation of being filled, of being locked together with another body. It was almost indescribable, the sense of relief that was also one of immense tension, the sense of being connected in a way that was otherwise impossible. Physically yes, but also emotionally.

It was utterly irrational: a full-on influx of hormones flooding her system like water through a spillway, her brain immersed so deep in biological imperative that she couldn't discern where the edges lay. She knew it was, but she couldn't feel the truth in it. She was tied to him, bound to him in this crucial way, hearing his breath hitch shallow and feeling him tremble with every inch he gained, his heart like thunder against her hand. In that moment she was completely, stupidly in love with him.

The brain was the most powerful erogenous zone in the human form and operated on a feedback loop. Would she have felt so much affection if she didn't feel so good physically? Or did it feel this good because of that affection? She wasn't sure she would have been able to tell even if she wasn't eyeballs deep in it. Nor did she really care.

He stopped exactly when he should have at the resistance of her cervix, not trying to force deeper. As expected, he was too long for her, but not by that much – or so she gauged by what she could feel. Less than an inch. Which was better than she'd assumed. Depending on how things went, she might be able to take all of him with the right angle and level of arousal.

And she was pretty fucking aroused.

He didn't need her to tell him what to do then. Bracing his hand and knees against the bed, he withdrew from her, and returned with a little less caution. This time she saw the over-bright burn of pleasure in his eyes, the slight arch of his neck.

The hand at her throat had lowered to the mattress next to her, but now he moved, wedging it under her back, splaying his hand across her side and lifting to press her up into his chest. His breath hissed between his teeth at the graze of her nipples against his skin. A sound she felt all the way down to her toes.

The next thing she knew, she was hitching one leg high over his hip, rocking up into the motion of his body. A good rhythm. Steady, sure, but too gentle. Not enough.

Her hand slipped under his arm, following the shallow dip of his lower back and down to press against the swell of his ass. His gasp was sharp, a hard in-taken breath. Muscle bunched beneath her hand and between her thighs as he thrust, harder this time, rougher. It had been absolutely unintentional, yet it struck her somewhere deep and delicious and she gripped him tighter, coaxing him to do it again. His hips stuttered, the hand high at her waist twitching, rhythm momentarily broken by the swift shiver that rippled through him, echoed in his cock.

Her hands were sliding almost mindlessly over his skin, slick and fever-hot, the muscle in his shoulders flexing tight with every stroke, her cunt clenching around him as he shoved into her – thick and perfect. With every roll of his hips he was rubbing across her clit and she was squirming, near to choking on her whimpers at the pressure. With every second just a little more desperate, and a little more shocked.

Holy shit…

 _Holy shit._

Was he actually going to make her come?

She had had plenty of sex, and never in her life had she _ever_ reached an orgasm with her partner inside her. Not even with her own hand to help her along. It just hadn't happened, for whatever the reason, though she had never blamed either of her boyfriends who both had usually made sure to see to her beforehand, or after. Mostly. All right, _sometimes_. But she had been all right with that, liking the sense of closeness enough not to mind.

But she was…and he was…

 _Holy. Shit._

 _~/~_

Mercifully, she didn't make him wait long.

This was not to say that he wouldn't have waited as long as it took, because he would have. But he was still more than a little relieved she had come back so quickly.

She was clutching a little box in her hands as she drew near, and he eyed it, perplexed, and intensely curious. Was this why she had left? What was it for? And why had she needed it right then, badly enough to interrupt them?

Her fingers curled into the seam of the matte black surface to pull back the lid and extract a little silver square. Abandoning the box to the table, she sank to her knees back on the bed and took the square between her fingers, pinching the corners and tearing it open to reveal something else inside – an odd, perfectly circular bit of what looked like clear plastic.

Studying it, he didn't notice her reach until her hand curved with the shape of him, fingers sliding up along the underside where his pulse seemed to echo as insistently as in his temples. Heat surged, and how he wished he had a voice to tell her: _yes,_ and _please,_ and _touch me._

She was pressing the plastic against him and he angled his head down to watch her fit it to the end, fighting the reflexive shudder at the touch to incredibly sensitive skin. It felt more akin to rubber than to plastic, he noted, and appeared to be a sheath of some kind, for she was rolling the material down to encase his flesh in a snug sort of membrane.

"I'll explain later," she assured him, and he nodded, unconcerned.

While the casing wasn't entirely comfortable, he hadn't exactly been comfortable to start with and it wasn't _un_ comfortable either. Clearly there was a reason for it, if it required explanation. But he was content to wait for that part if it meant she continued to touch him.

He was half considering simply asking by closing her fingers around him when she spoke again, this time with a tiny quaver in her voice.

"We're going to have to go slow, ok?" she said. She was staring down at the part of him still cupped in her hand looking at him rather like the way she had upon first seeing him, a uniquely confounding mix of awe and apprehension. "You're a little...larger than average."

Concern prickled at the edges of his mind. Her words were utterly baffling to him, but something in the way she formed them was more than a little troubling.

What did she mean by that? He knew the truth in statement logically: he had never come across anyone as tall as he was, nor so bulky, yet he suspected she wasn't referring to his build. What, then? And why was she saying they needed to be slow? Slow with _what?_ She usually explained things so well, but she seemed deliberately cagey about this and he wasn't sure how he felt about it. She had said she would explain later. But there had been that hint of unease in her voice, and waiting didn't really seem…

His thoughts splintered, scattering into pieces when she lay back upon the bed.

He couldn't not look at her. She was so endlessly lovely, and like this – bare and inviting, stretched out for him to see – she was somehow even more so. It took him following the soft curving lines of her body down to realize she had positioned herself so that his legs were between hers, not all that unlike the way she had done to straddle his lap. It wasn't that different, really…and yet it was.

What was it about this that had caused her concern? What was it about this that made his brain feel like it had turned to scalding liquid within his skull?

She was reaching for him and absently he offered a hand to her, unthinking, as if to help her up. Her slim little fingers gripped him tightly. He felt her skin slide against his, a forceful pressure at the backs of his legs as she pulled firmly at his hand.

With a cold surge of alarm he tipped forward, yanking reflexively from her grip to throw out his hand. The other flattened against her belly, willing her to stay where she was in case his arm didn't hold and he had to pitch his weight sideways to keep from crushing her. It held, thank goodness. He didn't have the time to be relieved, however, suddenly all too aware of the soft skin at the insides of her thighs sliding along the space under his hipbones, warm and smooth. Of her hand reaching between them to grasp his length and angle him down the slick heat at the juncture of her legs.

The thick ridge fit with strange perfection against her, aligning with her shape in a way that was…

With a shock of sudden clarity he understood.

He'd always thought the people he saw entangled together were merely rubbing against one another – an assumption only fortified, in his mind, by what he'd experienced with Whitney two nights ago, and again this morning. But he had been wrong both times. He saw it now, the complimentary differences in their bodily construction; the contrast between her, soft and concave, and him, stiff, protruding. They were meant to fit together, not unlike a key and lock.

Once the comparison struck him so did the implication of the image, the realization that his body had been designed to be inside of hers.

 _Inside_ her.

Finally he understood what it was his mind had been instinctually trying to push him to do – the gaps closing with the click of gears falling into place. And now that he knew, his entire being seemed to be humming with the urgency to get inside her, to sink deep into that soft, secret place.

He gave into the compulsion and pressed forward, his vision nearly bleaching white as her body parted around him and the tip of his suddenly painfully aching flesh slipped into her, hot and silken and perfect.

Just… _perfect._

 _This_. This was where he was supposed to be. Here was purpose and belonging and rightness, and…

Something was wrong. She wasn't languid and pliant and sighing the way she had when she'd guided him to use his fingers. There was resistance. She was tense, the muscles in her abdomen and thighs wound tight, but in the wrong way. It was not welcoming, but defensive.

He blinked back the haze of bestial impulse screaming for him to shove as deeply as he possibly could, just in time to see the flinch streak across her face.

He froze.

That had been pain. He had hurt her.

Her hand was pressed flat against his sternum, asking him to stop, and his blood ran cold as though injected with liquid frost. He was already moving cautiously back, terrified to move too quickly in case pulling away brought her more pain.

"It's ok."

There was a faint tremor in her voice which clashed with the gentle slide of her hand across his chest, a touch meant to soothe.

"Everything's ok," she added, and she was definitely trying to reassure him. "I'm fine."

But she _wasn't_ fine. Nothing about her being in pain was anywhere close to fine, and he did not understand why she would claim it to be. Yet, as he looked at her, the frown carving deep into his brow, she smiled at him, and he saw no traces of the pain he'd glimpsed so briefly. There was only a mild kind of frustration, and restless wanting.

"Remember I said we'd have to go slow?"

She _had_ said that, and it had worried him then, before she'd distracted him with all her pretty soft skin and insistence on pulling him down over her. He should have wrenched himself out of it. Made her stop and refused to move until she told him what it meant.

"You're a little big for me, that's all," she explained quietly, "I have to...adjust."

Larger than average. That was what she had called him, and now it made sense why it had seemed to be in reference to something aside from his general stature in contrast to her smallness. She hadn't been talking about his body, but this specific part of him.

And of course. She had been so tight around his fingers. It hadn't occurred to him that this was due to anything more beyond just how that place inside her functioned, but it was so obvious now that wasn't the case. He was so much bigger than she was in every other capacity. It only made sense that the key-and-lock fit would be wrong. And she had known this all along. Why, then, would she have him…but then she had just said that she needed to _adjust_ , which implied that this issue of size and fit wasn't a permanent one.

It was more difficult to think than normal, his body was locked in a heightened state of distress at her nearness, the whispered promise of ecstasy right there within reach. But he could not abide feeling pleasure at the expense of her pain. He would far rather go without this particular connection with her – as much as he wanted it.

So much that his lower back was shrieking with it.

Firmly he shoved the discomfort out of his mind and focused instead on how to help her. He wasn't sure there was much he could do short of removing himself from between her legs, but as she didn't appear to want that, he was determined to find something else. He wanted her as she had been those minutes ago, sleek and lush and relaxed. He wanted her eyes hazy and bright, her voice in his ears, rich and sweet with ecstasy. How did he bring her back to that without aggravating the problem?

He was moving without thinking, following the curve of her side up and down with his palm the same way she was reassuring him with the hand still resting soft against his chest.

It was an idle touch, meant to mirror some of her soothing back to her. He hadn't expected it to result in some of the tightness in her legs to lessen. But he felt it under his hand as he traced back up the supple length of her thigh, the muscle uncoiling ever so slightly. Which is when it occurred to him.

There was muscle lining the channel inside her, both intricate and strong, as evidenced by the grip she'd had on him and the resistance he felt now. Muscle contracted and released according to tension, the tone and amount of that tension changing depending on the need. Maybe her body had anticipated pain in accordance with his size and the anticipation had caused her to inadvertently guard against him rather than allow for that adjustment she spoke of – which had resulted in the very pain she had worried about.

Wonderful, infuriating woman. He wished she had just told him, but he couldn't rightfully say he didn't understand why she hadn't. He would have refused, too horrified by the prospect of hurting her to hear the rest. She would have had to coax and wheedle and plead with him, and even then he might not have conceded. She wanted this with him and was willing to do what it took to have it, even if it meant enduring a bit of pain, and he had no right to insist that she couldn't make that choice. All he could do was lean on her knowledge as best he could.

He let his palm slide inward along the graceful arc of her side, his eyes skimming over her bare torso to rest at her neck, slender and pale.

She liked to be touched there, along the throat and at the nape, under the jaw; and _he_ liked touching her there. So he did, softly, his goal to elicit calm and comfort.

Her lips parted on a faint sigh and he couldn't curb the impulse to touch her mouth. To his surprise, her little pink tongue darted out to graze the tip of his finger, her eyes suddenly glittering as if she knew exactly how his groin had just clenched in response to the tiny burning stroke. In almost that same second he felt the rush of heat, slick and beckoning, as her body gave beneath his.

He didn't wait for her to encourage him. He pressed down and forward, as slowly as he possibly could, in case the adjustment process wasn't an immediate thing.

It was not an easy task. He was warring with his own impulse to shove quick and hard, near to shaking with the effort it took him not to do so – to take, to _claim_ – almost certain it would hurt her. And not only that, but there was the look of something close to rapture on Whitney's face. Her eyes half-closed and her teeth digging into the lush surface of her lower lip. She clutched at him, made a little broken sound, and the gentle scrape of her nails down his chest as her fingers curled was enough to make his skin ignite.

Resolutely, exercising all the willpower he possessed, he seized the impulse and held firm. Sliding slowly, inch by luscious inch, until he could go no further.

There was a definite end point within her. He took pointed note of that, mentally calculating how deep he could physically go. And maybe the fit was, as she implied, a little less than perfect. He could not have cared less about that even if he tried.

She had already taught him what to do. She'd had him mimic the necessary motions with his hand, imitating this other, even more intimate act. He pulled away from her, the friction tight as if loathe to see him gone, and when he pressed back, it was a little more firmly. The way she had asked him to use his fingers – sinking smoothly into the soft, molten heat of her.

 _Oh…_

When she had put her hands on him he had thought he knew what pleasure was. Oh, no. No, he had been quite mistaken.

 _This_ was pleasure.

Braced upon his forearm, he slid his other hand beneath the arch of her back and pulled to him, obeying the compulsive urge to have her closer. The softness of her breasts pressed into him, warm and inviting, and somewhere in the back of his mind he wondered if the right thing to do would be to stop, to make sure she was all right – if _this_ was still all right. But he felt the inside of her thigh slide up to hug his waist, her hips moving to meet his as he thrust back into her, and realized somehow that must mean the answer to both questions was yes.

He felt the edge of her thumb graze his side, her hot little hand splaying across his back and moving down. To his shock, she gripped him boldly by the backside and _pulled_.

She wasn't strong enough to move him simply by raw force, but there was power in her touch, which she well knew. The muscles in his back and belly and limbs tightened upon a thick shiver as heat carved along his spine like lightning to stab deep into his brain.

His hips jarred roughly into hers, hard, unmeasured. She whimpered, pulled again, the grip of her thigh at his waist tightening.

He was rapidly losing grip on his sanity. Rationality was crumbling, at the mercy of how gloriously _good_ she felt, turning him to a crude mass of bestial craving and instinct. It was almost alarming. Almost. It might have been enough to make him retreat from her, afraid of the damage he might do were he to truly lose himself with her…had she not been doing all of those things she had when it had been just his fingers buried inside her body. Telling those bestial parts of him, _quite_ clearly and with unmistakable fervor, that she liked it.

The pleasure was intoxicating. _Drugging_.

His chest was heaving, his breaths gone shallow and raking in his lungs in the way of intense endurance. He felt everything, _heard_ everything: the gliding rasp of skin upon skin, the soft, slick sounds every time he thrust into that lush, perfect heat. He didn't even _know_ how to describe the sounds she was making, needy, trembling moans low in her throat that stoked the lust in his blood like fire and that he knew would haunt him forevermore. The scent of her was so thick that he could taste it on his tongue, rich and heady and sweet. She filled, _completed_ him. He wanted to sink himself somehow deeper and never leave again.

He lowered his head, pressing the brow of his mask into the juncture between her beck and shoulder. It was probably extremely uncomfortable for her, hard and clunky and abrasive, yet she wound her hand around the back of his neck, fingers sliding across the base of his skull as if to hold him there.

She must not mind. That was good, because he didn't think he had the strength to lift it.

Her body was clenching around him, a powerful rhythmic pulse in precise, even match to the throb in his groin and spreading out through his flesh and lodging in the base of his spine. He could no longer think. He could do nothing but feel, stumbling into the blinding rush of ecstasy as it reached up and dragged him down.

" _Jason,_ " Whitney breathed.

That was it, the sound of his name in her honey voice. It was all he needed to cross the threshold of desperate pleasure into agony. The heat in his body snapped, shattered, cutting through him like a lash until it consumed everything that wasn't her.

The euphoria seemed to strip him entirely, rendering him weak, unsteady and fever-chilled.

He was cognizant enough to catch himself, though only just. His body was pressing down on her, heavy and loose and too much, yet she didn't seem bothered by it. She seemed restless, but not…

With a pang of self-chastisement he realized that she had not reached the culmination of her own pleasure. She had been near to it: that he was relatively confident of, judging by the sounds she had been making, the edge of wildness to her movements. But she hadn't quite gotten there.

Determined, he raised himself up on an arm that trembled, but held, and shifted his weight to the left.

She was looking up at him, her face soft and warm with affection, which turned quickly quizzical when she met his gaze and didn't see what she seemed to expect there.

Reaching down, he slid his free hand over the curve of her hip to find the sensitive little place just above where he was still joined with her.

She had been running her hand along his back, but he felt her pause then. Her eyes widened with surprise and a trace of what he thought was disbelief before her head fell back, onto the waves of coppery hair spilled and shining across the sheets, and she emitted another one of those keening moans that could have reduced him to so much rubble. All at the gentle stroke of his fingertips. Intent on doing what he'd planned to do before she had sidelined him with this wondrous interconnecting of bodies.

This lock-to-key perfection.

There was just one thing missing – and he was going to remedy that.

~/~

Whitney smiled, folding herself around him as he jerked and shuddered against her, endorphins pooling warm and light along her nerves.

If he had managed to hold on for just a _little_ bit longer, he would have had her there. But she honestly couldn't even be disappointed by that. There was a kind of relief in being joined like this that she couldn't get by reaching an orgasm. She had wanted him inside her and she had gotten it (oh wow, hadn't she just). That was _plenty_ to be getting on with for now.

She was impressed he'd lasted as long as he had, frankly. A testament to his impeccable control, especially in the beginning, and probably with the aid of the latex. And this had just been the first go. He was _definitely_ going to be getting her off with his cock at some point, and she wasn't going to have to wait very long once he started building up this specific endurance.

She was pretty sure the thought had just made her a little faint.

Jason was still shaking, still immersed in the grips of his own release. She was still running her hand up and down his back in an almost absentminded, affectionate reflex as his grip on her slackened and she settled back against the bed. He had been sagging over her, muscles uncoiling and loose, when suddenly she felt him move.

Abruptly he shoved himself back up, angling his torso to one side as he lifted his head to look at her, and she felt the slightly giddy smile fade from her own mouth as he met her eyes.

He didn't look dazed and sex-drunk. His gaze was set, resolute. Purposeful.

What on earth…?

It wasn't until she felt his knuckles graze her navel before she realized what he was doing.

 _Oh my god._

Sweet, beautiful, _attentive_ man.

Even solidly in the grips of his own orgasm he'd realized she hadn't followed and was apparently not going to be fully satisfied until she had. His hand splayed across her lower belly, thumb sliding through damp curls to find her clit, slick and suddenly _throbbing_ for him.

She hadn't had time for her arousal to lose its edge. At the first hint of touch her back arched, sharp and involuntary – suddenly hurled back into a state of staggering, mindless need. His fingertip circled the tight knot of nerves, surely able to feel the shuddering spasms of her walls around him. He did. She felt it in the slight jerk of his hips even though he had already spent himself inside her.

Fuck, was this going to work him back up again?

Holy hell, it just might.

He had taken note of the little whining noise she had made in response to that reflexive jerk. Because of course he had. And of course he would put it together with the fact that he was still buried deep within her. He began to move: very slight back and forth motions timed exactly to the quick, teasing strokes of his thumb.

Her body curved like a bow, her hips pressing helplessly up into him. She was moaning like something out of a bad porno, utterly uncontrolled and half-delirious with the screaming burn of pleasure as her cunt clenched and spasmed and clamped down around him like a fist…

For a moment she tipped straight into madness.

She couldn't see. She couldn't breathe. She was nothing but raw nerves, the pulse of the heartbeat centered in her abdomen, bleeding her way back to sanity as her head lolled against the bedding.

Vaguely she felt him shift them both to one side, sliding free from her body and nudging her leg out from beneath him as he cradled her like the ragdoll he had reduced her to. She could almost hear the words he could not speak in the stroke of his hand in her hair and down her back: soft endearments, affectionate and sweet, her name. His love. She could do no more than lay there, stunned right out of her blessed mind, trying to work her brain around just how ridiculously… _good_ he had been.

Because _of course_ he would turn out to be incredible in bed.

It actually made total sense, even in her completely addled state.

It wasn't that he was naturally _just that good_. Not in the way that implied practice and mastery. He simply paid attention. That was really all it took to take a man barely on the other edge of being a virgin (whatever the hell that even meant, honestly) and turn him into a sex god.

Jason was more observant than both her previous lovers put together, and he was endlessly patient by nature. He watched and listened for the cues she offered and he ran with them, knowing from previous encounters that the more he did so the better she responded, which fed both the part of his mind based in instinct geared to making her want to stay with him _and_ the part that loved her and which found pleasure in her happiness. The more blunt she was the better, and that was not something she had much direct experience with.

He more than deserved the praise. He did what men should do without getting his ego all wrapped up and bruised in it.

Women were complicated and diverse – what worked for one did not work for others – and if a man wanted to bolster his prowess by getting his partner off then he needed to watch and listen and give a damn, not just bulldoze his way through assuming he knew what he was doing. Jason had no ego attached to the act. He wasn't relying on it to fulfil a narrative he was seeking to believe about himself or even just to fulfil his own needs. He enjoyed being with her. And he _very_ obviously enjoyed getting her to orgasm. The results couldn't have been better if he'd had a decade to perfect his technique.

It was just that simple.

It took her at least a few minutes to be able to do it, but bolstered by those same powerful, bond-forging endorphins she managed to wriggle as close to him as she could get and nuzzle her face into his neck, humming in contented bliss. She felt a soft vibration against her cheek, a low, soundless rumble, as if he had purred like a cat. Which was goddamn delightful.

He had such nice skin. Smooth and healthy aside from the scars. She wouldn't have expected that upon her first sight of him…although there were plenty of things she hadn't expected. And now here she was, sprawled next to her serial killer boyfriend after some truly fantastic sex.

Was he her boyfriend now? The word seemed thoroughly wrong – beyond just a bad fit. So then what was he? Her partner? Her lover? Her Significant Other?

Definite nope on that last one.

The word _boyfriend_ had always come with these weird unspoken strings and expectations. After a period of dating there would come cohabitation, then marriage, then children, and that was the way relationships were conducted. It had always seemed too far off in the future for her to worry about seriously, and neither of her previous relationships had been long-term enough to get within sneezing distance of those stages. She and Jason had skipped straight to cohabitation (if a little unorthodoxly so) and then backpedaled to...she couldn't really call it dating as she understood it to be. Unintentional and somewhat unwitting courtship, she supposed.

Wow, this was weird.

But as strange as the whole thing had been she was happy with him. And now that she was very seriously considering it, she found she didn't really find herself wishing for the normal expected life that came alongside a standard boyfriend situation. She didn't give a shit about marriage aside from whatever legal and financial reasons there were to it, which wasn't likely to be an issue here, and she had never really felt the draw toward having kids.

She had been told so many times that she would – that she _really_ _would_ – but she never had. She had firmly begun to believe that if she hadn't felt it by now she never would. Which was also a thing in favor of this less than typical relationship. There was no doubt in her mind that Jason would have made a more than wonderful father had he not been quite so scarred in all the ways he had been. She hadn't asked, she probably never would, but she didn't think he associated children or childhood with much approaching the realm of positive. Maybe she could have talked him into it, helped him deal with some of his trauma and his misgivings if she wanted to. But it certainly wasn't worth doing for such a petty and unnecessary reason. And she simply didn't care to.

Though speaking of children…

"Here," she said abruptly, and (with something of a struggle because her bones were still fusing themselves back together) sat up.

Carefully she slipped the condom from him – still somehow intimidating in spite of being mostly soft and having just had him inside her – and leaned over his body to toss it and its contents into the little dusty plastic-lined basket under the table which she assumed was for trash. Well, it was now. She stretched out her arm for her already soiled shirt, bending a knee for balance and grateful for the hand Jason laid against her lower back to keep her from toppling headfirst to the floor.

Straightening, she offered the shirt to him to clean up, which he did, looking bemusedly absorbed in doing so in an all too charming way.

When he offered it back she just pointed to the floor. She was a bit…damp, but it was nowhere near to the degree it would have been without the latex barrier, and she needed to pee anyway. Rather than chucking it as she had, he reached over the side of the bed and set it gently down, which inspired her to lean over and kiss the mouth of his mask before scooting clumsily to the end of the bed.

"I'll be right back."

She was always somewhat surprised by how easy it was to pee after sex, even if she hadn't had to beforehand. It was a good thing, too, since it was so necessary to do so in order to avoid problems. UTIs, bacterial infections, etcetera. It did ruin the moment a bit, but she suspected Jason would be up for plenty more cuddling.

He was examining the condom box when she got back, turning it over in his hands and studying the writing as though trying to string together complex pieces of code.

Right. Explanation time.

Crawling back to her spot on the bed she lay on her side, propped up with one arm, trying to sort out where to start.

Jason returned the box to the table and angled his body toward her. Reaching, he laid one great, gentle hand against her side and coaxed her lower body a bit closer so that their legs touched. She smiled, tucking one of her calves over his.

"Do you remember when I made you take me to the bathroom in the middle of the night because I was bleeding?"

She'd had it before, but she certainly had his full attention now and for an entirely different reason. She could tell he did just from the way his eyes honed in on her face, so she continued. Slowly, a little haltingly.

"I said it was like an internal wound."

He nodded again, encouraging, as if to say: _keep going._

"And I asked if you knew where babies come from…" she added hopefully, only to be met with the same blank confusion he'd given her before when she'd posed the question. Nope, he definitely didn't know. "Every month a woman's body gets ready to have a baby—sort of like making a nest, but inside. In here."

She laid a hand flat to her belly, a few inches down and in from where his own hand still rested at her hip.

"If she doesn't get pregnant, then her body sort of…throws a tantrum. It tears the nest apart and throws it away. It's blood and tissue and other things. It lasts a couple days and, like an injury, the woman needs bandaging of some kind to absorb the blood and such. To stay clean. And because it's not like urine that you can hold until you're ready. It just comes out, whenever it happens."

His eyes dropped to her stomach, processing her words with that bright, keen light of interest at something that so many people (men and women) found completely disgusting. Even with her gnarliest stories she wasn't sure she had managed to gross him out yet. She wasn't sure if she should take that as a challenge or not. Though she kind of wanted to.

"If…"

She paused, thinking. What was the best, simplest way to phrase it?

"A baby is made when a man and a woman do what we just did. The man puts his—"

She couldn't say penis. She just couldn't. She hated the word and it was clinical as shit and she just couldn't do it.

"—cock," she indicated with a tip of her chin, "into a woman's body and inserts genetic material to mix with her genetic material. The woman's body keeps that material in the nest it made and over a few months it grows into a baby. Which then comes out of her when it's ready."

Like a loaf of bread. Good gravy this was hysterical. But he seemed to be following as well as she could have hoped.

"I'm not ready to have a baby, so we use things like those," she pointed over his shoulder to the box, "to form a barrier between us to keep me from getting pregnant. There are other methods I would prefer, but I'd have to see a doctor for those. And I didn't want to wait to…"

Was she blushing? Yes. Yes, she absolutely was.

"To do this with you. Have sex with you, I mean. That's what it's called."

She had averted her eyes from him simply due to habitual response to embarrassment. Which was silly really. Why should she be embarrassed? _He_ certainly wasn't. He was just taking in what she taught him.

"It's mating for animals. Which I guess is the same thing, really, except it kind of implies babies will happen."

His hand left her side to gently touch her chin. That sweet, completely unforceful request to look at him. She did, finding the blue-gray of his eyes soft and warm as if reminding her that she was safe. The jitters lessened immediately, for which she was grateful.

"Does that make sense?" He nodded. "Was the…was it uncomfortable?"

He frowned slightly, as though he didn't follow the question. She was about to rephrase, make it clearer that she was talking about the condom and not intercourse, when he seemed to catch her meaning and shook his head. Thank goodness. She fully intended on getting to a doctor and seeing about some other form of contraception as soon as possible, but she didn't really want to wait until then to repeat this experience – because she wanted him to fuck her _stupid_.

The movement of his hand caught her attention and she blinked, focusing on him as he indicated her with his two-fingered point, then his own groin, then his covered mouth, tapping the fiberglass twice before watching her expectantly.

Nope, she had nothing.

"One more time?"

Ever patient, he reached for her. was much plainer the second time, reaching to skim his fingertips across the apex of her thighs, then cupping his hand over his cock – specifically the organ itself, not simply the groin area – and finally tapping the mask.

Wait, she had given him a name for his penis. Did he want the same for her? Was that what this was – a way to refer to the anatomy in his own head?

"Are you asking what this is called?" she lowered her hand to cover the dark curls between her legs, and he nodded, openly enthusiastic. She couldn't not smile. He was so damn earnest and unbothered by any of it. It was really nice not worrying about social stigma and the weird, toxic repression it caused. "It's…complicated."

And it was. Women's bodies were so much more complex than men's were. That would be harder to explain, there were so many parts involved.

She decided not to go into too much detail. He didn't need to know all the internal parts involved in child-production, just the things important to his purposes. Turning her leg, she bent her knee and opened her thighs for him to see. And weirdly enough, while talking about it had been embarrassing due to deep mental conditioning, this didn't bother her nearly as much. He'd watched her orgasm. He'd had his fingers inside her. She needed to be past the point of shyness about it.

What she was less sure of was what terminology to use. So she started easy, indicating the tight bunch of nerves at the very top.

"This is called the clitoris—or, the clit, for short." She was blushing again. Damn it. Moving on. "And this is…" Her fingers brushed lower, indicating the opening to the vagina. "There are a lot of names. Just like for yours. I use _cunt_. Except not out loud, because it's—kind of rude."

Although really, even if he could talk, who was he going to offend by saying it? She could teach him every dirty word in existence and there was only her to say it to.

He seemed to find this satisfactory, for he nodded, then reached again, his fingers grazing the curve of her breast. Once again he brought his hand back to his mask and tapped the mouth.

"Breast," she named simply. He shook his head.

So he already knew that – or so she assumed since he was rejecting rather than absorbing it like the rest.

He reached again, this time very deliberately touching the pad of his index finger to the edge of her nipple, and she realized he'd been trying to be polite. Bless him. Goosebumps had immediately risen along her arms at the contact, and her skin tingled, which justified the effort.

"Oh," she said, a little breathy, which he definitely noticed. "Nipples. You have those too."

This he accepted with a nod and returned his hand to her side, stroking softly along the curve of her waist.

She lowered her head to a pillow, considering the exchange.

If they were going to continue this relationship, it would help if he had a better way of communicating with her. Not because it would make things easier for her – though she certainly wouldn't turn that down – but in case of emergency, when he didn't have time for her to guesstimate and end up hurt because she had done so wrongly. He had said reading was difficult, and she had no desire to force him to learn something that had taxed and frustrated him. But…

Oh for _fuck's sake_.

Why hadn't it occurred to her before now? The solution had been right there in front of her face the entire time. He was already doing it, if not with the universally recognized methods.

"What if," she hedged, not wanting to imply that there was something wrong or insufficient about his communication, "what if I told you there was a way for you to talk to me without talking or writing?"

Jason's head jerked up from where he'd laid it next to hers, his eyes sharp on her face – so intently focused she might have thought he was about to shove her down and demand she teach him right now and _why the hell_ had she waited this long to do so.

"There's a language for…well, mostly used by people who are deaf. Essentially it's talking with your hands. Sort of the way you do already. I—" There was something like pleading in his eyes. "I only know a few words and some letters. But I could get some books, maybe from a library. I could learn, and I could teach you. If you want?"

She hadn't even finished asking before he was cupping her face in his hand to emphasize how he then looked her straight in the eyes and nodded in the _vehement_ affirmative.

She smiled. "Ok."

He continued to stare at her, and after a moment she realized he wanted her to show him the words she knew.

What little she did know wasn't all that helpful. _Father_ (not even mother, how useless was that?) and _bullshit_ , and the sign for applause. She did show him the sign for _thank you,_ which he had her repeat just to ensure he hadn't missed some little inflection. She wasn't sure how helpful the alphabet would prove to be when reading and writing, and thus spelling, had been difficult, but she did show him the letter _J_ for Jason, and _W_ for Whitney.

"That's all I know," she sighed, her heart aching a bit at his obvious effort not to let her see his disappointment. "But we'll learn more," she promised, "it'll be fun!"

His breath left him a bit heavily, in a sigh of his own. It had to be frustrating. He clearly wanted this quite badly, and having the possibility made known to him only to find he would have to wait for it must have been difficult. Still, he nodded his agreement and settled back down next to her.

He studied her for a moment, unusually pensive. She almost wanted to ask what was wrong, though she assumed it was just the issue of not being able to jump right into learning more Sign. But he surprised her. As he regularly did.

Once more he lifted his hand to his mask, touching the ends of index and middle finger to the fiberglass shield over his mouth. Then he turned his hand outward to lay those same fingertips across her lips.

She didn't need him to repeat this gesture in order to understand it perfectly.

Emotion surged, wrenching the breath right out of her. Her throat tightened, her vision blurring at the corners, and it was all she could do not to burst into tears.

"Is it ok if I sleep a little more?" she asked, her voice tight.

Jason's eyes softened. Rather than nodding, he slipped his arm underneath her and lifted her gently so that she was resting with her head on his chest, his arms wrapped warm and secure around her, his hand a soothing weight against her back. The way she had been when she'd woken.

Obviously he had no intention of leaving this bed unless it was with her.

 _Fuck it._

She let herself cry.

Just a little bit.

* * *

 **NOTES** **:**

Hey all!

I almost thought about promising to get back to the plot next chapter…but let's be real, this has always been part of the plot, so sorry not sorry!

This one was a bit more of a wait than the last few. It's clear to me now that I needed to focus on something else for a little while, because I ended up getting unexpectedly sidetracked by a burning, mania-driven inspiration to write something else to the level of mad purging just to get it out (almost 50 pages in 4 days with very little planning/rumination time, which is insane even for me). It's not F13 and not horror/slasher, but if you like the way I write and enjoy sweet, somewhat tragic (but not really) romance, you might like it if you're in need of reading material.

While I have an endpoint planned and most big things plotted from here until then, I don't have much of it in strict order or very much written out yet, so please bear with me. I'm also actively searching for a new place to live with the intent of moving and I'm not sure what affect that's going to have. Rest assured I will continue to update as quickly as I'm able.

I'm going to leave it here for now, but a giant goddamn THANK YOU to all of you for your comments and your kudos and for giving me literal life. Thank you for reading. Thank you for all the love you show me.

Be well.

Until next time.


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